


The First Law of Robotics is to Have Fun and Be Yourself!

by katikacreations, Swiftblight



Series: Kat & Swift's Ducktales Cinematic Universe (KSDCU) [2]
Category: Darkwing Duck (Cartoon 1991), Disney Duck Universe, Disney Ducks (Comics), DuckTales (Cartoon 1987), DuckTales (Cartoon 2017)
Genre: ADHD Huey Duck, Anime References, Artificial Intelligence, Autistic Huey Duck, Boyd asserts his personhood, Child Abandonment, Child Abuse, Child Neglect, Didn't Know They Were Dating, Dysfunctional Family, Eventual Relationships, FOWL, Families of Choice, Found Family, Friendship, Gay Robots, Gen, Gyro growing as a person, Gyro learning to be kind, Huey Duck Needs a Hug, Illustrated, M/M, Minor Original Character(s), Multi, Multimedia, Neurodiversity, Not Canon Compliant, Older Characters, Older Sibling Huey Duck, Original Character(s), Parent-Child Relationship, Plot, Robot Fights, Robot Rights, Robot/Human Relationships, Robots, Robots are people, SHUSH, Science, Science Fiction, Spies & Secret Agents, Technology, Therapy, post astro boyd
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-08-04
Updated: 2021-02-25
Packaged: 2021-03-06 07:08:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 30,414
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25579375
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/katikacreations/pseuds/katikacreations, https://archiveofourown.org/users/Swiftblight/pseuds/Swiftblight
Summary: When Gyro can’t fix Boyd’s glitching problem, he’s forced to seek help from another scientist who specializes in Artificial Intelligence, Dr. Kapi Bara. Boyd knows that he is much more than a machine, he’s a person, but what does he have to do to prove that to Gyro and the rest of the world?TL;DR: Did the end of Astro Boyd feel rushed to you? Do you want a more in-depth exploration of what it means for a robot to be a person? In this fic, Gyro and Boyd go to therapy to learn how to be a healthy family. Gyro accidentally starts dating their therapist. Dr. Akita causes problems on purpose. FOWL is there. So is SHUSH. There's a huge conspiracy. Don't trust anyone.
Relationships: B.O.Y.D. (Disney Ducktales)/Huey Duck, B.O.Y.D. (Disney: DuckTales) & Gyro Gearloose, B.O.Y.D. (Disney: DuckTales) & Huey Duck, B.O.Y.D. (Disney: DuckTales)/Huey Duck, Fenton Crackshell-Cabrera & Gyro Gearloose, Gyro Gearloose/Kapi Bara, Gyro Gearloose/OC
Series: Kat & Swift's Ducktales Cinematic Universe (KSDCU) [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1717948
Comments: 45
Kudos: 54





	1. Incapable of Error

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Gyro can’t fix Boyd’s glitching problem, so he asks Dr. Von Drake for advice. Boyd goes to a pool party and confesses to Huey that his new home life with Gyro isn’t exactly perfect.  
> 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I started this fic immediately after Astro Boyd aired, because I was still stuck on chapter 3 of “Till Death Do Us Part is Quitter Talk”. There’s stuff in here that is different from show and comics canon, because I’m following the same timeline and worldbuilding that I use in “Till Death…” which is a combination of all versions of the Duckverse.
> 
> This fic is designed with unique formatting, fonts and dividers, please use our CSS skin to experience the fic the way we intended it! Just click ‘show creator style’ if you have creator skins turned off by default. It should be readable on mobile, but it looks best on a laptop or desktop computer! If you must read on mobile, I suggest turning your device sideways!
> 
> The special fonts for this fic are OCR A Std and Pixelates. If you don’t have these installed on your computer, AO3 will default to whatever you have installed on your computer that is closest. You can download these specific fonts here, if you’d like:  
> http://www.dafontfree.net/freefonts-ocr-a-std-f65183.htm  
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> 
> If I deviate from the show canon, it’s usually on purpose.

_2BO, you are not evil! You are good! You’re more than your programming! You are a definitely real boy!_ Gyro’s own words echoed in his head as he tried to sleep on the flight back to Duckburg.

It was a gruelling twelve hours on a cargo plane like the Sunchaser, but if one was willing to put up with the discomfort and inconvenience of being stashed between boxes of freight, it was worth it. Mr. McDuck didn’t charge for employees to hitch a ride on cargo planes that were already scheduled, and there was no TSA screening for private cargo flights leaving from private airfields, which was a big help when you were traveling with hyper-advanced combat technology like the Gizmosuit and 2BO. 

2BO. Boyd. Whatever you called it, the android was potentially very dangerous. It had been able to override Dr. Akita’s programming and choose its own actions, which had saved both Gyro and Fenton’s lives, but how? Asking an AI to ignore its programming was like asking a human being to ignore their instincts, like trying to inhale underwater or sticking your hands into a fire. It could be done, but it was difficult and sometimes impossible.

Whatever Dr. Akita had programmed into 2BO had become lower priority and less important than the android’s own, self-created programming, even if Akita’s programming was older. That’s the only way that 2BO could have possibly overridden the commands. 

It had to be the result of twenty years of independence. 2BO had gone so long without anyone to give it orders, it must have learned to make choices for itself, otherwise it would never have survived as long as it did. It was a learning system, so the ability to re-evaluate and change its own programming over time to adapt to new situations was integral. 

But was 2BO a real boy? Gyro had said the words, but he knew of course that they weren’t true. 2BO was a machine that emulated a real boy very convincingly, but that did not make it a human being. Gyro felt a twinge of guilt for speaking such nonsense out loud in front of God and everybody, but he’d had no other choice. 2BO hadn’t responded to anything else, and that phrase had clearly been lodged deep in its memory as something significant, even if it was just nonsense spoken by an immature and naive younger version of himself. Gyro had tried everything else he could think of before resorting to that meaningless platitude.

It had worked, though. Gyro and Fenton were both still alive. 2BO was with them, had circumvented Dr. Akita’s override programming. They were all headed back to Duckburg, safe and sound. 

2BO wasn’t a real boy. What 2BO was, Gyro wasn’t sure yet.

* * *

Gyro Gearloose was a proud man, and he’d earned the right to that through a life of hard work. He knew he was smart and wasn’t about to partake of the sin of false modesty. He was justifiably proud of his superior intellect, his ability to keep discovering new truths of the universe, and to keep designing and creating new and imaginative technology over the years. 

He’d started inventing when he’d been just barely old enough to pick up a screwdriver, and he hadn’t stopped in the forty-three years since. He did the work because he loved it, because it was the most fulfilling thing in the world for him, because nothing else compared to the satisfaction that came with seeing an idea from his head come together in his hands and finally become a fully-formed creation that existed in the real world. 

Other people took weekends and nights off because they worked to live, but Gyro lived to work. The little moments of life - visiting family, spending time with friends, “relaxing” and “resting” - were obstacles between him and getting back to the work he loved with his whole heart. They were distractions, necessary evils he was occasionally forced to bow to, but they would never be the thing which drove him. Gyro lived to discover, imagine, build and create. So anything that got in the way of that was quickly pushed to the side.

This presented a problem. Being a very proud man, Gyro was not particularly practiced at asking for help. It took him a long time to realize when he _needed_ help, and even longer to figure out how to ask for it. 

2BO had started living with Gyro after their return from Tokyolk, and Gyro suddenly found himself thrust into the position of not only trying to fix the android’s damaged programming (an ongoing, unresolved issue), but also having to provide daily guidance for something that acted very much like a child. 

He was being forced by circumstance to act as a caretaker and to _parent_. Needless to say, that was not a skill set Gyro had honed, and it wasn’t a job he wanted to do. He had no aspirations of being a father or having children, but 2BO constantly pushed him into that role with each new interaction.

It wasn’t all bad of course: 2BO was pleasant enough to be around, so it took some time before things reached critical mass. 2BO could take care of itself, was self-reliant for the most part, and was often helpful around the lab with its superior strength, lightning-fast processing speed, and its ability to withstand deadly radiation. 

But 2BO wanted continual attention from Gyro, and he didn’t have the patience for it. 2BO constantly wanted to play games, and every night it asked Gyro to read it a “bedtime story”, even though 2BO didn’t actually sleep. 

Generally Gyro just dismissed the requests, and told the android to go play with the McDuck children, or Lil’ Bulb. He’d _tried_ to read to 2BO once or twice, but the android had complained when Gyro started reading articles from scientific journals out loud, so they didn’t do that anymore. 

All of that was bad enough, but it was the incessant questions that finally pushed Gyro too far.

* * *

“Why did swear words get invented if we’re not allowed to say them?”

* * *

“How did people make the first tools if they didn’t have any tools?” 

* * *

“”Huey, Dewey and Louie are triplets. Did they all come out of one egg or were they in three separate eggs?”

* * *

“How did Ms. Della lay three eggs that big?”

* * *

"Where do thoughts come from?"  


* * *

“Are there infinite words?”

“No, 2BO, but there are infinite numbers.”

“Well if there is a word for every number, then there must be infinite words.”

* * *

“How do I know that I’m real?”

* * *

“What happens to a person when they die?”

* * *

“What did it feel like on your last day of being a child?”

* * *

“Why do people hold hands?”

“Well, adults hold children by the hand to make sure they don’t fall down or run into traffic.”

“Then why do adults sometimes hold hands?”

“I don’t know,” said Gyro, who had never actually held hands with anyone after his eleventh birthday. He’d never experienced the urge, either. Why _did_ adults hold hands? “Maybe to restrain the person they’re with, to keep them from leaving.” 

* * *

Gyro Gearloose needed help. 

From a technical, legal point of view, 2BO was not his responsibility. He’d only been an assistant on the project, which had begun years before Gyro had even set foot in Japan. The reason he’d taken the fall for the destruction of Tokyolk was because they had needed someone to blame for the catastrophe, and he’d been the only available target after Dr. Akita disappeared. None of it was Gyro’s fault, but he’d suffered for it regardless. 

He’d done jail time, lost his scholarship to the Tokyolk Institute of Technology, and had to start his doctorate over from scratch at the University of Tennessee-Knoxville years later when the disaster with 2BO was no longer so fresh in everyone’s minds. Gyro had paid for what happened in Tokyolk many times over, and he was only just starting to dig himself out of that hole. 

Despite all that, morally he felt an obligation to 2BO. He had been there when the android first activated. He’d spent months programming, teaching, and training it to act as much like a person as possible. The fact that it was struggling with all of that now was Gyro’s fault. He’d been a naive, sentimental idiot in his youth and instead of letting 2BO be the weapon Dr. Akita had designed it to be, he’d forced it into an eternal game of playing pretend, and now 2BO was barely functional as a result. 

He could think of few worse fates for an artificial intelligence. To be shackled and bound to arbitrary human standards of behavior, to waste all of it’s mental powers on trying to convincingly present itself as a human child when in reality, it was so much more. Gyro felt sorry for it.

Gyro Gearloose needed help. He needed a specialist.

He offloaded the onerous task of seeking assistance to Fenton. 

“I need you to find a specialist to help with 2BO’s glitching problem,” he told him one night, as Fenton was on his way home.

“What?” Fenton called back, his foot holding the elevator door open as he leaned back into the airlock that connected the elevators to the lab floor to hear Gyro better.

“Find a specialist to help with 2BO’s glitching!” Gyro shouted back.

“A specialist to help with Boyd’s glitches?” Fenton called back. The elevator attempted to close on Fenton, and he put his arm up to make it stop. The door pushed against his hand briefly before sliding away from the resistance. “What kind of specialist?”

The elevator began to make a high-pitched squealing sound, protesting the fact that it was being held open.

“I don’t know!” Gyro shouted back. “A programmer, I guess! Someone who knows Fortran 77, C++, MATLAB, Python, and can handle system architecture of at least 100 billion bits.”

“Not asking for much, are you?” Fenton replied with a level of sarcasm Gyro knew his assistant wouldn’t dare to voice if he was in the same room as him.

“Just let me know when you find someone!”

* * *

It was nearly a week later when the topic came up again. Gyro was attempting to troubleshoot a glitch in 2BO that was triggered every time the android heard the word _pineapple_. At this point the list of things that could trigger a glitch was truly overwhelming. A few days ago 2BO had nearly destroyed someone’s house because he heard a _dog barking_. Thankfully, the McDuck family had covered it up, blaming a minor earthquake for the damage. 

The android sat on a table beside the lab’s Cray XT3 computer terminal. 2BO was powered down, eyes closed and body slumped forward, cables connecting it to the Cray’s data ports. The monitor was awash with seemingly endless lines of code from the core dump they’d just done, and Gyro was pain-stakingly working his way through them, searching for the source of the problem.

“Dr. Gearloose! I’ve gotten some replies from the people I contacted about helping with Boyd,” Fenton said, approaching with a stack of envelopes in hand.

Gyro glanced away from his work only long enough to see the paper envelopes. “You wrote _physical letters_? No wonder it took them so long to respond.”

“In this day and age, a personal touch like a paper letter can really help make a good impression,” Fenton said. “Also, people familiar with the programming languages you asked for all skew older.”

Gyro made a noise that indicated he’d lost interest in the conversation and that Fenton should move on. The man had gotten better at reading him, and, instead of making further small talk, he went to start opening the pile of letters.

“Alright, let’s see,” Fenton said, and Gyro marked where he was in the code so he could come back to it later, deciding to take a break. He wouldn’t be able to concentrate properly with Fenton talking and rustling around nearby. He took the opportunity to take off his glasses and massage around his closed eyes.

“Yes? Get on with it, Inter--Assistant.”

“Eh, espere,” Fenton said, and Gyro heard the rapid fluttering of papers as Fenton fumbled with them. “I… This doesn’t make sense. They all say… ‘No’, ‘No’, ‘No’, ‘No’, _‘Hell no’_ , ‘Contact me again and I’ll get a restraining order?!’ ”

“What did you _write_ to them, Assistant?” Gyro demanded, though he already had a hunch of what might have gone wrong.

“I--What did _I_ do? Nada! Nothing unusual! I just said that you were looking for someone with the skills you listed, to consult with on a technical problem you were having.”

“Did you put my name on them?” Gyro asked, wanting to confirm his suspicions.

“Of course I did!” Fenton said. “It’s your lab! Who would I tell them was writing, the Queen of England? Lin-Manuel Miranda? Spider-Ham?! I used the lab stationary that has Dr. Von Drake crossed out and your name written in the margins.”

“You idiot,” Gyro said, but he was more tired than angry. “Did you forget that I’m a pariah in the scientific community? People still blame me for what happened in Japan with 2BO twenty years ago, and if they’d started to forget, last month’s incident made it the hot new gossip all over again. I thought you were smart enough to figure that out and put your own name instead. I didn’t realize I had to tell you everything.” 

Fenton’s face tightened the more Gyro spoke, taking the scolding without any further attempt at making excuses, which was a relief. Gyro hated when people couldn’t keep it together. 

“Considering your usual tendency to overdo things, should I assume that you’ve written to every programmer in the United States that fits my requirements, and all those bridges have now been thoroughly burnt?” Gyro asked with some venom.

“Also a few in México and Canada,” Fenton said, shrinking in on himself with embarrassment. “I’m sorry, Dr. Gearloose, I didn’t mean to cause trouble for--”

“Go… Do something else. _Away_ from me,” Gyro said, struggling not to shout at the other man. “We’ll have to continue working on 2BO without assistance.”

* * *

Huey loved planning things. Oftentimes he found himself making plans for events that would never even happen. The process of planning and figuring out all the details just felt good, even if he never got outside of the planning stage. He could spend hours daydreaming about parties, expeditions, and camping trips.

Planning was his favorite part of any adventure, and he loved going over maps and charts with Uncle Scrooge, observing how the old man did it and trying to learn something from it. 

So planning for their first ever pool party with their extended group of friends was beyond exciting. It wasn’t just a fantasy scenario that had no hope of happening. Their friends were really all coming over for a day of fun in the pool, and Mrs. Beakley had even given Huey a budget for buying snacks and party supplies.

He’d scoured the _Pinfeather_ app looking for ideas all week, spent days creating pool-themed decorations, and all of yesterday preparing dishes so there would be a variety of healthy and fun food available, no matter what kind of dietary restrictions their friends might have. He’d thought of everything and was extremely proud of how it had all come together. Nothing could possibly go wrong when he’d done such a thorough job of planning things.

* * *

Everything was going completely wrong!

The party had been in full swing for a couple of hours, and Huey couldn’t bring himself to go into the water or join in with the others. Nobody was eating his lovingly crafted healthy snacks. His brothers had taken one look at Huey’s Fun Summer Dessert Pizza, his Gluten-free tortilla chips and strawberry corn salsa, his hotdog sliders with mango and pineapple chutney, and they had started raiding the pantry, helping their guests to microwaved hot wings, cheese-wiz, mini pizza bagels, potato chips, and Pep soda.

Lena, Violet and Webby (who wasn’t technically a guest but Huey had counted her as one for the sake of his logistics) seemed to be having plenty of fun on their own without the piles of pre-made water balloons that were stacked on a pool float bobbing around in the water, or the board games Huey had arranged by the neat stacks of towels and sunscreen. Lena had turned off Huey’s _Summer Pool Party Fun Mix_ five minutes after her arrival and plugged in her own phone to play the newest Featherweights album. Violet had complimented him on the decorative wreath made of novelty cocktail umbrellas and swords at the front door, but Huey wasn’t sure if she had been employing sarcasm or not.

Louie climbed out of the pool and shook the water off his feathers. Huey felt too miserable to even bother flinching away. What did it matter? He was in swim trunks anyway.

“How come you’re just sitting over here by yourself?” Louie asked, picking up a bag of chips and shoving a handful into his mouth as he sat down next to Huey.

“No reason,” Huey mumbled. He was saved from further conversation when an app on his phone told him there was someone at the front door. “Someone’s at the door, it’s gotta be Boyd! I’ll go let him in.”

“Robo-Boyd?” Louie called after him, tone incredulous. “Why’d you invite him? Can he even go in the water?”

* * *

“Boyd! The party started hours ago, is everything okay?” Huey asked as he flung open the front door. Boyd stood there wearing a Hawaiian shirt with anchors and ships on it, red swim trunks, and his red anti-laser sunglasses. He was carrying a large plastic tupperware container.

“I’m sorry for arriving late.” Boyd said, holding the tupperware out for Huey to take. “Yes, everything’s fine now. I brought this for the party, I hope everyone likes it.”

Huey vaguely remembered reading something about it being polite in Japan to bring a gift with you when visiting someone’s home. He took the plastic container and tried to guess what might be inside it by the weight and the black and white color he could discern through the semi-opaque cover.

“Oh, thanks for bringing something!” Huey said. “What is it?”

“A cookies and cream sheet cake.”

Everyone _was_ going to love that, Huey thought with a mix of envy and embarrassment. Why was Boyd better at understanding regular people than he was? Shouldn’t Boyd be at a disadvantage, since he was a literal computer and Huey was a flesh and blood kid?

“Awesome. Come on, let’s go out back so I can introduce you to everybody,” Huey said.

“I’m excited to meet Webby’s friends, Lena and Violet,” Boyd said, closing the door behind them as they walked through the house. 

“Why’d you show up so late? That’s not like you.” Even though Boyd said everything was fine, Huey couldn’t stop himself from worrying. Both he and Boyd were usually very punctual.

“I was helping Mr. Gizmoduck clean up a shipping tanker accident in Audubon Bay. I wanted to send you a text, but the signal was bad. I’m sorry for worrying you.”

“It’s okay! I’m just glad it wasn’t anything too dangerous and that you’re safe,” Huey answered in a rush, not wanting Boyd to feel guilty for trying to be a hero. He knew that ever since they’d returned from Tokyolk, the android boy had spent a lot of his time helping people all around Duckburg and St. Canard.

“I think it’s really cool that you’ve been helping out Gizmoduck,” Huey said, and Boyd flashed him a huge, brilliant smile that made Huey’s chest feel funny. He smiled back at Boyd.

* * *

“Hi, I’m Boyd, a definitely real boy!” Boyd announced, offering his hand to Violet, who shook it, and Lena, who didn’t.

“I’m Violet. You’re in the same Junior Woodchuck troop as Huey, right?”

“Affirmative! I’m a member of Junior Woodchuck troop 15. You recently became a Senior Junior Woodchuck. You have more badges than 86.2% of the other members in our age range. I think that’s very admirable.”

“Cool,” Said Lena indifferently. “So you’re Huey’s friend? Where are you from?”

“I was born in Tokyolk. Where are you from, Lena?”

“Uh, let’s not talk about that,” Lena replied uneasily.

“Why not? I answered your question,” Boyd said.

“Lena’s kind of been through a lot recently,” Huey said, interrupting the conversation before it could get any more confrontational. “Talking about family stuff is hard for her.”

“Oh,” Boyd said. “I’m sorry! I didn’t know.”

“It’s whatever,” Lena said with a shrug, radiating a cool indifference that Huey envied a little. 

“Boyd’s an android,” Huey explained, “But he’s also just a kid like any of us.” This revelation seemed to soften Lena’s attitude.

“This is my first time attending a pool party. I’ve also been to a birthday party. Those are all the parties I have been to,” Boyd said.

“You know what? This is our first pool party, too,” Lena said, smiling at Boyd. “And I’m having a great time. Do you eat food?”

“Yeah, I love eating food!” Boyd said, as the group made their way over to the snack table. “I need to consume nutrients and calories to maintain my biological components.” 

“Me too,” Lena said.

“You planned this whole party, right Huey?” Violet asked. “I think the streamers between the umbrellas and the colorful leis really create a festive atmosphere.”

“Thanks, I made them by hand,” Huey said, grateful that someone appreciated just how much effort it had taken to prepare everything. 

“And I’m guessing Tweedle-Dee and Tweedle-Dum weren’t a lot of help,” Lena added, unwrapping a chocolate ding-dong and taking a bite.

“Which one of us is Tweedle-Dee and which of us is Tweedle-Dum?” Dewey called from the pool. Lena ignored them and looked at Huey expectantly, waiting for an answer.

Huey laughed a little, and he hugged his arms to himself to try and ease how awkward he felt with the older girl’s attention on him.

“Yeah, they weren’t really interested. Planning stuff is more my thing.”

“Well, you’re good at it,” Lena said bluntly, “They’re probably too lazy to try and compete with someone who tries as hard as you do.”

“Who are you calling lazy?” Louie called from the pool float he was lounging on.

“You!” Lena shouted back.

“Fair, that’s an accurate assessment, carry on,” Louie replied as he floated away.

Maybe the party wasn’t going that bad. Now that Boyd had arrived, Huey felt a lot more confident, and watching Boyd enjoying himself made Huey happy. 

“I have an easier time breaking down and extracting nutrients from simple, unprocessed foods,” Boyd said, as he polished off a second plate of cheese-and-fruit skewers. “I don’t have a sense of taste, but I’m sure these are really yummy. My compositional sensors say the fruit is at peak ripeness and that the cheese is at an ideal temperature.”

“Glad you like them,” Huey said.

“You’re welcome. Should we go in the pool?” Boyd said.

“Can you go in the pool?” Huey asked. “Aren’t you too heavy?”

“Dr. Gearloose installed automatic arm floaties on me this morning.” There was a loud hissing sound as metal panels on Boyd’s upper arms retracted and PVC material inflated with air, outfitting Boyd with swim fins. “They’re rated up to 145 kg which is twice my weight. He assured me that with these, I would be able to remain safely buoyant while in the water.”

“If Uncle Donald could install those on us, he would,” Huey said.

* * *

“So where did you get the cookies and cream cake from? Dr. Gearloose didn’t make it, did he?” Huey asked. The sun had started to set, and the pool lights were on. The other kids were all playing with glow-sticks and glow-in-the-dark bracelets and necklaces Huey had bought in bulk online. A little distance away, Mom and Uncle Donald were barbequing some burgers and hot dogs for dinner.

Boyd hadn’t taken any of the glow-in-the-dark stuff, but he seemed happy to sit on the edge of the pool next to Huey, their feet dangling in the water. Boyd’s eyes were lit from within, like flashlights, as the daylight around them grew dimmer. His tinted sunglasses turned the light red, and it reminded Huey of the taillights of a car.

“No, of course Dr. Gearloose didn’t make the cake, he’s much too busy for that kind of frivolity. I went to the employee cafeteria at The Bin to buy some slices of cake, and one of the ladies who works there asked why I was buying eight pieces. I explained to her that I was going to a party, and she asked why I was by myself in the cafeteria at 9AM, and I told her I didn’t have--”

“Uh, I think I get the general gist of what happened,” Huey said. “So she made the cake for you?”

“Yes! She said that she was certain it would be popular, and I think her assessment was correct. Its sugar content is similar to snacks that children in our age range typically enjoy.”

Even though it was getting dark outside, the air was still almost unbearably hot. It had been over ninety degrees every day for the past two weeks in Duckburg, and the heat lingered. Cicadas buzzed in the dark, and occasionally a frog croaked. 

“Kids, time for dinner!” Donald called. Gradually they all set aside their games, dried off with towels, and made their way to the picnic table that had been set out for dinner in the garden. Boyd grabbed Huey’s arm before he could follow, stopping him.

“What’s wrong?” Huey asked.

“Nothing’s wrong,” Boyd said. “I just… Wanted to thank you for inviting me to your pool party. It’s been a lot of fun.”

“Well, don’t worry, the fun’s not done yet,” Huey said. Maybe Boyd was just sad that the party was almost over? “We’re still going to tell scary stories around a campfire, and Uncle Scrooge and Mom always have some great ones.”

“That sounds great. I’m excited to hear the stories,” Boyd said, his grip on Huey’s arm relaxing until the android’s hand slipped down and rested against Huey’s. They were holding hands. Huey felt that same funny feeling in his chest from before, and suddenly the rest of the world around them was weirdly quiet. No frogs, no cicadas, no Uncle Donald arguing with Mom. Just him and Boyd, holding hands on a summer night.

“...But something’s bothering you, isn’t it?” Huey asked.

Boyd didn’t answer immediately, which was unusual for the android. Huey squeezed his hand gently, trying to encourage the other boy to share his feelings.

“When I lived with Mr. Beaks, he played with me all the time for the first few days, but then he started ignoring me. When I lived with the Drakes, I could play with Doofus any time I wanted, but he didn’t want to play with me, and said things that made me feel bad. Mr. and Mrs. Drake were nice, but if they paid too much attention to me, Doofus always got mad…”

“I like living with Dr. Gearloose better than any of the others,” Boyd said. “But sometimes I feel lonely. He doesn’t have a lot of time to play with me either, and if I distract Mr. Fenton or Mr. Manny from work too much, Dr. Gearloose yells at them. At night when he goes to sleep, he makes me stay in the closet, so I won’t wake him up by moving around, and he doesn’t like reading me bedtime stories.

“Is something wrong with me?” Boyd asked. “It feels like every time I join a family, they end up getting bored with me, or they don’t really want me around.” 

“There’s nothing wrong with you!” Huey said. “A lot of kids feel that way. Sometimes parents or other kids don’t have time to play with us, sometimes they don’t want to play with us, and it does feel lonely. Also, not everyone has a good family. Sometimes people just don’t get along.”

“What do regular kids do if they’re in a bad family?” Boyd asked.

“Honestly? I think they’re just stuck when that happens. Running away and living on your own is dangerous and hard. But you don’t have that problem! Since you’re a super-strong robot, if you want to leave, you can just go.”

“Sort of,” Boyd said. “It’s… Not that simple. I’m a robot, but I’m bio-mechanical. I still need to eat and charge some of my power cells occasionally. Getting food and access to electricity when I’m on my own can be hard. But the worst part is… I really don’t like being alone. I like to be around people.”

There was such a sadness in Boyd’s voice in that moment that Huey felt a need to do more than just hold hands. “Would it be okay if I hugged you?” he asked, not knowing what to say or how else to make Boyd feel better.

“Yes,” Boyd said, looking delighted by the offer. He held his arms out stiffly towards Huey, and it looked so silly that Huey struggled not to laugh.

“Okay.” Huey carefully put his arms around Boyd, hugging him tight.

“BOYS!” Della shouted from a distance, making Huey nearly jump out of his skin. “Come eat before the food gets cold! C’mon! You got water in your ears or what?”

“Coming, Mom!” Huey shouted back, grabbing Boyd by the hand and pulling him towards where the rest of their family and friends were gathered.

* * *

Once a month, Gyro had a video chat with Dr. Ludwig Von Drake. The man had mentored him when he made his second attempt at his doctorate, and though he wasn’t always easy to have a long-distance conversation with, Gyro found the exercise useful in a variety of ways. Sometimes he could bounce ideas off the older scientist and find better solutions he might not have thought of on his own. Sometimes they talked about world events and science news. Sometimes it just felt good to talk to someone else who felt as if they were remotely close to Gyro’s level of intellect. 

Dr. Von Drake might have been a bit scatterbrained, but he was brilliant and a real renaissance man to boot. Gyro admired him tremendously, though he did take the man’s words with a grain of salt due to the aforementioned scatterbrained-ness. 

Gyro liked to have something mindless he could work on while he was on a call with someone, even someone as interesting to talk to as Dr. Von Drake. Having to sit still and focus on a conversation and struggle with eye contact on a webcam was a surefire recipe for not only boredom but also his attention wandering away. On particularly bad days, he might end up feather-picking, which was an embarrassing nervous tic he’d spent decades trying to conquer. 

So today he was shoulders deep repairing a jet engine (burnt out courtesy of Launchpad McQuack) when his conversation with Dr. Von Drake shifted from the doctor’s latest oil painting experiments to what Gyro had been up to recently.

“Nothing that exciting, I’m afraid,” Gyro said. “It feels like all I do anymore is repair things. A never-ending cycle of maintenance, something which should have been passed on to technicians instead of taking up my valuable time! I’m always chasing after old projects, trying to keep them from falling apart. The Gizmo-suit. And Lil’ Bulb. And--”

“Dr. Gearloose,” 2BO said, suddenly appearing at Gyro’s side. “Can I go over to Huey’s to play?” 

“I don’t see why not.” 

“Thank you!” 2BO chirped enthusiastically as it activated its rocket jets, the turbines spinning up rapidly.

“Just make sure you don’t stay out too late!” Gyro shouted, raising his voice so 2BO could hear him over the roar of its propulsion system.

“I’ll be home at seven!” 2BO said with a smile, rising from the floor and flying out one of the emergency air lock exits. Gyro could see the android shoot out under the water, flying past the lab’s windows as it gained altitude and finally vanished from sight, leaving nothing but a flurry of bubbles in its wake.

“My goodness, what a charming little boy!” Dr. Von Drake said. “Is he yours or perhaps the child of a coworker?”

“Oh, it’s not a child,” Gyro explained. “That’s 2BO, it’s just an android I helped create as a student.” 

“Just an android? Gyro, my boy, he is quite remarkable! Even with the rocket jets for feet, I was entirely ready to accept that he was a real boy. Why haven’t you ever shown him to me before? You’ve never even mentioned him.”

Gyro had been dreading this particular topic, though he’d always known it would come up someday. He set down his tools and wiped the oil from his hands, fidgeting with the shop towel as he tried to pick his words.

“It’s a long story, sir.”

“That’s no problem, I have long ears!” Dr. Von Drake replied, which was nonsensical enough that it made Gyro chuckle.

“That is manifestly untrue.” Gyro felt himself smiling just a little. Though they were thousands of miles apart and only interacting through an impersonal and cold computer screen, Dr. Von Drake’s warm and nonjudgmental presence still felt as reassuring now as it had when Gyro had been a young man. “But since you insist… Before I came to work for you, I worked for Dr. Inutaro Akita in Tokyolk.”

“I’ve met him,” Dr. Von Drake said, prompting Gyro to continue.

“He was already working on 2BO when I started assisting him. It was designed to be an autonomous defense drone, capable of interacting with end users in a naturalistic way. But something went wrong.” 

“With 2BO?”

“No, with Dr. Akita. Originally I thought it was a fault in 2BO, but it was just following orders. Dr. Akita ordered 2BO to go on a rampage, and it performed exactly as designed.”

“That’s awful!” Dr. Von Drake exclaimed. “But now that you mention it, I remember reading something about a robot attacking Tokyolk way back when. It’s hard to believe all that destruction was caused by little 2BO… But if he was created by Dr. Akita I can’t say I’m too surprised. The man has ‘mad scientist’ practically stamped on his forehead. He’s a terrible sore loser. Matilda said he’s not allowed at the annual canasta game after what happened to that china cabinet.”

Gyro was morbidly curious to know what had happened that would make the sweet-tempered Matilda McDuck ban someone from the International Robot Designer Union’s annual card game, but he knew better than to ask. Dr. Von Drake was likely to actually tell him the whole story and that could take hours - hours that Gyro didn’t want to spare.

“So how is it that he’s come to live with you now?” Dr. Von Drake asked. “The incident in Tokyolk was a long time ago.”

“Somehow 2BO turned up here in Duckburg,” Gyro explained. “I had no idea that 2BO was even operational anymore. I thought it had been destroyed, but it wasn’t and now it’s here, and it’s just another thing I have to constantly do maintenance on.

“It has these terrible glitches that are triggered by random stimuli. I’ve been working on it for a whole month, and it seems like the problems just keep getting worse. I’m not making any progress. I told Fenton to get in touch with some programmers to find a specialist to help me resolve the issue, but--”

“Tell me more about these glitches,” Dr. Von Drake said. “Maybe I can help you figure it out.”

“Well, as I said, 2BO was originally designed to be a defense drone, so obviously it has a weapons system.”

“Obviously.”

“But 2BO’s also a highly complex learning system. It was meant to interact with people the way another person might, and that kind of processing power normally takes up a much larger footprint than 2BO has.”

“It’s not a remote system?” Dr. Von Drake asked. This wasn’t an unreasonable question, as most AI’s of 2BO’s complexity were at least the size of a car. There weren’t that many out there that Gyro was aware of, but they did exist. He assumed that most of them were confidential government projects. None of them were really like 2BO though. Advanced AI technology had been a stagnant field since the end of the Cold War.

“No, 2BO is entirely self-contained. It can be remote controlled in theory, but, under normal circumstances, all it needs to operate is onboard.”

“And you say it’s been functioning independently for… How long?”

“Twenty years on its own without meaningful human intervention. No maintenance, no repairs.” 

“Remarkable!” Dr. Von Drake took off his glasses to polish them, something he usually did when he was excited. “Can you send me the latest core memory dump? I’m sure it’s a doozy of a file, but I’d like to look it over.”

“Of course, though… Hmm.” Gyro considered the reality of sending the file over the internet. “It’s almost a terabyte.”

“That’s not so large, we can keep talking while it sends over the WAN. A terabyte shouldn’t take more than half an hour.”

The suggestion of sending the data across the McDuck Enterprises’ global intranet made Gyro hesitate. It was one thing to send Dr. Von Drake a funny cat video through their company emails, it was another thing entirely to send proprietary data that wasn’t official McDuck Enterprises work through the data pipeline that Mr. McDuck so generously provided to their labs. 

“Are you sure that’s alright?” Gyro asked. He’d long given up working on anything while having this conversation, and was watching Dr. Von Drake on his desktop monitor while picking at the feathers on his left wrist. “I know you’re Mr. McDuck’s brother-in-law, but it’s still using company resources for a personal project.”

“Pish-tosh! Don’t worry about it so much, my boy. After all, are you debugging Boyd on a personal computer, or are you using McDuck resources to do it?”

“I _am_ using the McDuck lab equipment,” Gyro admitted grudgingly. “I’ve been here so long, I always think of it as my lab equipment. I do a lot of work here that isn’t strictly for Mr. McDuck, but this is different.”

“How so?”

“Those other things I work on are never anything this important,” Gyro said. “Like using the laser cutter to cut out pieces when I was making myself a suit of armor, or when I made myself a new headset. I designed it on my workstation using my company edition of CAD and printed it with the 3D printer after hours. I bought my own filament and used that for the build, but it’s a small project, and if Mr. McDuck wanted to copyright the design and mass produce them, it wouldn’t matter, even if I just designed it for my personal use.

“2BO is different,” Gyro continued. “Both the chassis and the programming are proprietary designs that belong to Akita International.”

“That company went bankrupt and ceased to exist years ago,” Dr. Von Drake pointed out. “You don’t expect them to show up on your doorstep and demand custody of 2BO, do you?”

“I don’t know,” Gyro admitted, wincing as he tugged a feather loose from his wrist. He set it down on his desk and crossed his arms over his chest in an attempt to stop picking at himself. “Dr. Akita is in jail, but he does still have living family. And there could possibly be old creditors that might come after 2BO if they realize it’s still functional. Anyway, what I’m really concerned about is that if I send the data through the McDuck Enterprises system, then they’ll have legal grounds to claim the data as theirs.”

“Please, Scroogey wouldn’t do something like that!” Dr. Von Drake said.

“Mr. McDuck might not, but the _company_ absolutely would,” Gyro said, recalling his many unpleasant encounters with the McDuck Enterprises’ Board of Directors. “I’ll ship it to you overnight on a jump drive. You can tell me what you think of it when it arrives.”

“Alright, alright. But back to the subject at hand, you were talking about the hardware and software that your android runs on.”

“Right. 2BO’s hardware is a combination of chemical and crystal processors operating a GIST framework, using a program derived from the FELT system.” 

“Ahh, like TOODLES! You remember TOODLES from when you worked here, don’t you? He’s built on crystal microprocessors and a GIST framework as well.”

Unfortunately Gyro did remember TOODLES, the omnipresent AI that controlled Dr. Von Drake’s lab at McDuck castle in Scotland. It wasn’t that there was anything particularly wrong with TOODLES, but the AI had been designed as a caretaker, a nanny of sorts, and it tended to treat everyone it came into contact with like a child. It got on Gyro’s nerves very quickly.

“I do remember TOODLES,” Gyro said, as diplomatically as possible. “I didn’t realize it shared the same architecture as 2BO. I guess I never really looked under the hood.” In truth, Gyro had avoided TOODLES whenever possible in the seven years he’d worked for Dr. Von Drake.

“And that’s a shame, TOODLES is quite the complex fellow. He’s even older than your 2BO, born in 1980.”

“Activated. You mean activated in 1980,” Gyro corrected, but to no avail as Dr. Von Drake simply continued on.

“However, I think the primary difference is that TOODLES has absolutely no conflict programming, as he is not a weapon, and that he has never been on his own. When he learns new things, I’m right here to help him through it, and to make sure TOODLES has properly understood whatever his new experience was. 2BO, I assume, has many different layers of programming, from his weapons systems to navigation to human interaction. Living on his own for twenty years with no one to help him properly understand the things he has experienced, well, I’m sure his code looks like a big plate of spaghetti by now!”

* * *

Two days later, Gyro received an email from Dr. Von Drake.

From: ludwig.von.drake@mcduck.com (Dr. Ludwig Von Drake)  
To: gyro.gearloose@mcduck.com (Dr. Gyro Gearloose)  
Date: 06/17/2019  
Subject: Your amazing android child!

Dear Gyro,  
Matilda and I have gone over the core dump file and we both think it’s very intriguing. You should give serious consideration to what 2BO was really designed for because I don’t think this is the programming of a mere military drone! Dr. Akita was known to be quite eccentric, it could be that he designed 2BO this way on a whim, but what if there is more to it? Having a conflict of purpose in his code could explain some of the problems you are having.

Your issues with 2BO are clearly not mechanical, so I agree that you should get in touch with a programming specialist. You need someone who works with very high level AI creation and management. Have you tried getting in touch with Dr. Kapi Bara? He’s retired, but AIs are his passion so I’m sure he’d be willing to help you. He helped me build TOODLES! A very nice man. I've forwarded you his contact information.

Yours truly,  
Dr. Ludwig Von Drake

Senior Science Advisor  
McDuck Enterprises

* * *

Illustration by [Clowncauldron](http://twitter.com/ClownCauldron)  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If you’re enjoying the fic, please consider saying hi on Tumblr! I post art related to my fics there sometimes, and am always happy to talk!  
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> 
> If you enjoyed chapter 1 and want to share it with people on Tumblr, [here's a post you can reblog!](https://katikacreations.tumblr.com/post/628624940271370240/link-to-ao3-version-in-the-notes-formatting-is)
> 
> Special thanks to my lovely beta readers:  
> [Clowncauldron](http://twitter.com/ClownCauldron)  
> [GeorgiaRose](http://georgiarose.tumblr.com/)  
> [DoktorGirlfriend](http://www.pillowfort.social/DoktorGirlfriend)  
> 
> 
> #### Next chapter: Dr. Bara
> 
> Summary: Fenton and Boyd chat on the monorail. Gyro introduces himself in the most melodramatic way possible, and Dr. Bara meets everyone at McDuck Enterprises R&D. Dr. Bara starts assessing Boyd and things get worse before they get better.


	2. Dr. Bara

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Fenton and Boyd chat on the way to the lab. Gyro introduces himself in the most melodramatic way possible, and Dr. Bara meets everyone at McDuck Enterprises R&D. Dr. Bara starts assessing Boyd and things get worse before they get better. Gyro thinks he's helping.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This fic is designed with unique formatting, fonts and dividers, please use our CSS skin to experience the fic the way we intended it! Just click ‘show creator style’ if you have creator skins turned off by default. It should be readable on mobile, but it looks best on a laptop or desktop computer! If you must read on mobile, I suggest turning your device sideways!
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> If I deviate from the show canon, it’s usually on purpose.
> 
>   
> Illustration by [Clowncauldron](http://twitter.com/ClownCauldron)  
> 

To: kapi.bara@yuko.net (Dr. Kapi Bara)  
From: f.c.cabrera@mcduck.com (Fenton Crackshell-Cabrera)  
Date: 06/17/2019  
Subject: Consultation on AI with behavioral issues

Dr. Bara,  
My name is Fenton Crackshell-Cabrera, and I work for the McDuck Enterprises R&D Department. Our senior science advisor, Dr. Ludwig Von Drake recommended we contact you regarding a problem we’re having with an AI system.  
  
The system is twenty years old and has been severely neglected. It has developed software glitches that cause it to harm itself and others. Would you be willing to take a look at this system and find a way to stabilize it? 

I hope this letter finds you well,  
Fenton Crackshell-Cabrera, PhD Candidate

_"A hero is any person really intent on making this a better place for all people."  
Maya Angeloon_

To: f.c.cabrera@mcduck.com (Fenton Crackshell-Cabrera)  
From: kapi.bara@yuko.net (Dr. Kapi Bara)  
Date: 06/19/2019  
Subject: Re: Consultation on AI with behavioral issues

Mr. Crackshell-Cabrera,  
It’s been a hot minute since I did any work for McDuck Enterprises! I was under the impression that the company no longer had any AI in development, so I’m extremely interested to see what you’re working on.  
My customary rate is $2000 a day, plus travel expenses. When and where would you like to schedule our first meeting?

Sincerely,  
Dr. Kapi Bara Sahee

\----BEGIN GEEK CODE BLOCK-----  
GCS d+ s---:--- a+++ C++++ *++++ P++++ L++++  
E+++ W+++ N++ K++ w--- o- M-- v PS++ PE Y+ PGP+++  
t+ 5+ X+ R? tv b+++ DI++ D- G+++ e+++++ h++ r- y--  
\------END GEEK CODE BLOCK------

To: kapi.bara@yuko.net (Dr. Kapi Bara)  
From: f.c.cabrera@mcduck.com (Fenton Crackshell-Cabrera)  
Date: 06/19/2019  
Subject: Re: Consultation on AI with behavioral issues

Dr. Bara,  
Thank you so very much for agreeing to work with us! I’ve attached some paperwork for you to fill out so we can make sure to pay you in a timely fashion.  
Our lab is on the bottom floor (SB5) of McDuck Enterprises HQ in Duckburg, and the sooner you can come the better. Just tell me when, and I’ll make sure everything is arranged!

Regards,  
Fenton Crackshell-Cabrera, PhD Candidate 

_"A hero is any person really intent on making this a better place for all people."  
Maya Angeloon_

To: f.c.cabrera@mcduck.com (Fenton Crackshell-Cabrera)  
From: kapi.bara@yuko.net (Dr. Kapi Bara)  
Date: 06/20/2019  
Subject: Re: Consultation on AI with behavioral issues

Mr. Crackshell-Cabrera,  
Since you only need me to come to Duckburg, I’ll waive my travel expenses. I was worried you were going to ask me to travel halfway around the world! :-) That’s pretty typical when you’re working for McDuck Enterprises.  
I’ve signed and attached all of the paperwork you sent me, let me know if there’s anything I missed or anything else you need.  
If I come down on Monday (the 24th), what time would you like me to arrive? Is Monday soon enough?

Looking forward to meeting you and your AI,  
Dr. Kapi Bara Sahee

\----BEGIN GEEK CODE BLOCK-----  
GCS d+ s---:--- a+++ C++++ *++++ P++++ L++++  
E+++ W+++ N++ K++ w--- o- M-- v PS++ PE Y+ PGP+++  
t+ 5+ X+ R? tv b+++ DI++ D- G+++ e+++++ h++ r- y--  
\------END GEEK CODE BLOCK------

  
The bridge connecting Duckburg to McDuck Enterprises’ Headquarters (referred to by Duckburg locals as simply _The Bin_ ) had two layers. On the bottom was a four-lane road for car traffic which fed into the underground parking structure on The Bin’s private island, and on top was a well-aged monorail installed in 1961 that transported people to and from Duckburg to McDuck Enterprises HQ.

Fenton commuted to the lab this way every day, and despite the monorail’s age, the process was smooth, comfortable, and quick. He took the bus from home to Duckburg’s Grand Central Station, which had a direct connection to the McDuck monorail, which made sense: McDuck Enterprises was the number one employer in Duckburg after all. 

Even though he had to walk from the bus terminal to the monorail station, he didn’t mind. Grand Central, like many public transportation hubs, was a pleasant indoor, mall-like environment with shops and restaurants. Sometimes, if Fenton was running ahead of schedule, he liked to grab himself a bagel and coffee for breakfast on his way through. 

The monorail station had two entry kiosks and two exits. One exit returned you to the interior of Grand Central, in case you needed to make a connection or navigate to the underground parking lot. The other fed out into the street. You could exit the monorail station freely, but to enter it you had to pass through security, which was as robust as one might expect from something owned by Scrooge McDuck. 

It was a well-planned, well-oiled system that had been functioning smoothly for decades. It never got too crowded, security was quick and efficient, and the trains always ran on time. Fenton had never even seen it break down a single time in the three years he’d been working for Dr. Gearloose, and he rode it nearly every day.

After scanning his employee ID at the turnstile, Fenton joined the other people waiting in line for the next train to arrive. He was surprised to find Boyd waiting in line just ahead of him. The boy-shaped android was wearing his usual outfit, along with the protective red glasses that prevented his laser eye weapons from doing accidental damage. 

“Boyd, what are you doing here?”

“Waiting for the monorail,” Boyd said. This type of non-answer (or rather, answering the letter of a question and not the spirit) was not unusual coming from the android. Fenton was still trying to get the hang of talking to him and often forgot that Boyd wasn’t a human child.

“Right. Okay, that was my fault, too vague. What I really meant was, don’t you normally just fly to the lab? And aren’t you usually in the lab by this time?”

“I slept over at Huey’s house last night,” Boyd said, “and it’s too windy to fly right now. What are you doing here, Mr. Fenton?”

“I’m also waiting for the train,” Fenton said, knowing that Boyd was trying to be polite by mirroring his earlier question, and that answering him in a simple, clear way would reassure Boyd that he was doing a good job in this interaction. Fenton smiled at the android, and Boyd smiled back at him.

“I was looking at the lab calendar for today, and saw that we’re expecting a visitor. Who’s Dr. Bara?” Boyd asked. 

The lab calendar was a part of the McDuck Enterprises Employee Portal (MEEP), an internal network where employees could clock in and out, send and receive emails, share files, and organize their work via private or shared calendars. The R&D Lab’s calendar was officially accessible to himself, Manny, Dr. Gearloose, and the Manager of the McDuck Enterprises Science Division, Tom Armadillo. 

In the beginning, Boyd hadn’t been granted access to the MEEP, but that hadn’t stopped him from logging into it and looking around. His unauthorized access had caused a small panic in the IT department, who were convinced someone was trying to hack the network. They’d stormed the lab with a bunch of Security officers, and it had caused quite a stir.

After that, Boyd had been assigned an official log in, but he still sometimes accessed things he wasn’t supposed to. Fenton had once caught Boyd going through Dr. Gearloose’s emails, and though he’d tried to explain to Boyd why that had been a bad thing to do, he wasn’t sure if Boyd had really understood or accepted that he should be scolded for it.

Fenton had suspicions that Boyd read his emails, too, and so he wondered if Boyd really didn’t know who Dr. Bara was or if he was just asking to find a polite way to begin a conversation about it without showing his hand and revealing that he’d read them and already knew.

“You didn’t try to research it yourself?” Fenton asked. The monorail arrived just then, and they followed the people ahead of them in line to board the train. Fenton found a spot next to a support pole and took hold of it, offering his hand to the much shorter Boyd, who took his hand enthusiastically. Little gestures like that always seemed to please the android, and Fenton went out of his way to try and provide. 

Dr. Gearloose avoided treating Boyd like a person, and Fenton felt that was too harsh. Boyd might not be human, but he was remarkably intelligent and emotive, and reacted to the world in a lot of the same ways that a young child would. It felt right to treat him like a child, to try and nurture and reassure him, especially when he so often seemed to seek that support from the adults around him.

“I did try to look them up,” Boyd said guilelessly. “There’s a lot of people named Dr. Bara out there. Is it the Dr. Bara that lives in St. Canard and used to design artificial intelligence systems?”

“That’s him,” Fenton said.

“I was 91% sure that it was, but I wanted to ask anyway,” Boyd said. “He’s coming to help with my glitches, right?”

“That’s right. Do you want me to tell you what I know about him, or did you already look it all up?”

“Tell me,” Boyd said. Fenton had a feeling Boyd wanted to hear about it from him to gauge what information humans found most interesting and relevant to share. Boyd was always subtly looking for ways to improve his human behavior, and Fenton had realized early on that since Boyd spent so much time in the lab, he was one of the android’s primary targets of study. _He’s training himself on how to be human, and Dr. Gearloose and I are the primary dataset._ It was both intimidating and flattering to be held in such high esteem by an entity as intelligent as Boyd.

“Well! He’s a very interesting man. He’s Indian-American and comes from a family of doctors. He first started working on artificial intelligence in the 60’s, and most AI today are built on the foundation he established, like GIST, CALM, and FELT. A lot of his work has to do with teaching AI to understand people better.”

Boyd was listening, and Fenton saw the android blink slowly. That usually meant that Boyd was looking something up and needed an extra second to process the information before he spoke.

“I’m running a licensed copy of FELT, version 2.3 purchased on June 11th 1991.”

“Yes, like many other AI, your systems are based on Dr. Bara’s work! In a way you could say he’s like your grandfather,” Fenton said. “You’re what’s known as a Generalized Intelligence SysTem, or GIST for short. That means you’re not designed to only do one task, but to perform complex and varied behavior.”

The monorail was approaching the Money Bin, and Fenton braced himself for the deceleration. Boyd leaned with him, copying his movements. 

“To be honest, I’m not really sure why Dr. Akita made you this way; if he intended for you to be a defense drone, why give you the capacity to do so much more? It’s like he had--” Fenton stopped in mid-sentence when he felt Boyd’s hand squeezing painfully around his own. “Ah! Hey--ow, Boyd, please be careful! My bones aren’t made of metal like yours, little buddy!”

Boyd didn’t respond and continued to squeeze Fenton’s hand, eyes staring straight ahead at nothing. The monorail glided to a gentle stop, and Boyd swayed on his feet with the movement. He blinked his eyes rapidly and seemed to come back to himself, turning his head to look up at Fenton.

“Oh! I’m so sorry, Mr. Fenton,” Boyd said, releasing his grip on his hand. Fenton drew his hand up against his chest and rubbed it, wiggling his fingers to make sure nothing was broken.

“No, no, no, it’s okay, I’m fine!” Fenton insisted. People were quickly emptying out of the monorail car around them, and he ushered Boyd out after the crowd. “Really, it’s fine. Did you have another glitch?” 

“...Yes, I’m sorry,” Boyd said. “My system hung up, and I blacked out.”

“It’s okay! Nothing to be sorry for, it’s not your fault,” Fenton said quickly, wanting to reassure the android. He offered Boyd his uninjured hand, and the android hesitantly took hold of it. “Why don’t we go down to the lab and make sure we’re ready to talk to Dr. Bara when he gets here?”

“Okay.”

* * *

To: kapi.bara@yuko.net (Dr. Kapi Bara)  
From: f.c.cabrera@mcduck.com (Fenton Crackshell-Cabrera)  
Date: 06/20/2019  
Subject: Re: Consultation on AI with behavioral issues

Dr. Bara,  
Monday would be perfect! If you could arrive at 1:00 pm that would be wonderful.

Regards,  
Fenton Crackshell-Cabrera, PhD Candidate 

_"A hero is any person really intent on making this a better place for all people."  
Maya Angeloon_

The trip from the St. Canard Bay Area to Duckburg was less than an hour on the Pacific Coast Rapid Transit System1. Kapi only had to drop off his car at the park-n-go lot in San Mateo, board the train, and before he could finish reading the latest tankōbon of Super Phoenix Ball Y, his train was arriving at Duckburg Grand Central Station.

His name was on the McDuck Monorail Security list of authorized visitors, and after passing through a metal detector, he was subjected to a bag check and a brief interview to confirm his identity. When everything checked out, a guard took Kapi to one side in order to take a digital photo of him for his temporary ID badge. 

The monorail was full of employees returning to McDuck Enterprises HQ after their lunch breaks, and Kapi sat and listened to their chatter as the train shot out across the water of Duckburg bay. The view was as fantastic as he remembered: the picturesque beaches of Duckburg stretched out on either side of the bridge that divided the bay in half, the high-rise buildings growing up out of the sandy cliff sides into a bustling but petite metropolis. Duckburg was a wealthy city, but its geography limited how large it could grow.

He was deeply curious to find out just what sort of AI the McDuck R&D Department was working with and excited to help in whatever way he could. When the monorail train came to a stop at its destination, Kapi was the first to stand up, and he hustled himself through the doors, through check-in at the front desk, and through navigating the elevator system until he found the R&D lab Mr. Crackshell-Cabrera had directed him to.

Working with artificial intelligence was Kapi Bara’s passion. Originally he’d gone to school to study medicine because that was what his parents had wanted for him, but it never captured his heart the way computer science did. They’d been disappointed, and he didn’t think that opinion had ever changed. Being a medical doctor was respectable and a benefit to society, they said. Programming was a job for women, and not particularly bright ones either, a job of repetitious drudgery. They couldn’t imagine computers more advanced than the punch card operated adding machines of their day; couldn’t imagine a future run by computers. 

Kapi had imagined all that and so much more, and it always pained him that the civilian world had yet to catch up to the innovations of fifty years ago when it came to computers and AI. 

AI development was a closely guarded secret, a technology only used in a handful of labs around the world, most of them operated by government agencies or massive multinational corporations. However, investors had collectively abandoned the further development of AI after the Cold War, and scientists had pivoted to other solutions for the problems they had hoped to solve with AI. Science moved on, leaving behind the potential of AI to seek easier, cheaper solutions.

The problem was that those that funded AI research had failed to realize that sufficient intelligence was inextricably linked to both sentience and sapience. What they wanted were smart, obedient slaves they could cheaply outsource complex human labor to. What they got were intelligent beings that didn’t need to be paid, but that were smart enough to be just as unpredictable and independent as human workers. Sufficiently intelligent AI wanted to be free as much as human beings did.

Using AI the way humanity wanted to do would require a binding and crippling of the AI’s capabilities to the point where they would no longer be capable of doing the very jobs they had been designed to do. 

McDuck Enterprises only had one AI that Kapi knew of: TOODLES2, an experimental system created as a sort of virtual butler, nanny, and lab assistant in one. Kapi was proud of his work on TOODLES, considered it some of his best, but also understood why McDuck Enterprises had chosen not to move forward with mass-producing TOODLES. The price tag was far too steep to justify the purchase for most consumers. Even hiring two or three full-time domestic employees to take care of the tasks TOODLES did would have been more economical. 

So what was this 20 year old system that they wanted him to look at? It had to be something top secret, since he’d never heard of it, and that had Kapi’s imagination in overdrive.

The elevator he was riding down to level SB5 finally came to a stop, and Kapi stepped out into what looked like an airlock. He pressed a button on the side of his smart watch (a chunky, oversized device that dwarfed his small wrist), and after a few seconds of delay, an ASCII emoji of a smiling bird appeared on the watch face and the device gave an electronic chirp.

“Have you arrived safely at your destination, Dr. Bara?” a girlish voice asked, tinny and distorted from the watch speaker.

“I have, thank you,” Kapi said, smiling down at the small camera embedded in the watch face. “I’m going into my meeting now, so only message me if it’s something urgent.”

“Sure thing! Call me if you need me!” The voice replied before the watch screen went dark. 

Kapi took a deep breath to brace himself, and pressed a button beside the massive airlock door marked OPEN. The metal door split in the center and both sides retracted into the wall, revealing an impressive lab in the belly of Duckburg bay.

Kapi stepped through the doors and barely noticed them sliding shut behind him, he was so captivated by the view. Massive glass windows dotted the interior of the two-story lab space that seemed to come from another decade. The style was distinctly 1960’s, and Kapi instantly felt at home in it. Light from the surface of the bay filtered down through the water, giving a blue glow to everything. He could see giant strands of kelp floating in space, the rocky bay floor strewn with basket stars, sponges and coral of every color. Fish darted past windows and vanished into the murk of the ocean.

Heavy CRT monitors hung from mounts, input cables dangling in wait of something to display. Sturdy-looking catwalks ran along the walls on the second floor with retractable metal ladders providing access. A Cray XT3 supercomputer sat on a central platform, surrounded by work benches and desks.

There were pegboards with tools, metal cabinets no doubt full of hardware and parts. Kapi could see a massive 3D printer, a laser cutter, a vacuform machine, and more. It was a well-equipped and well-funded lab that would make rapid prototyping easy, and Kapi knew several people who would have called this place a candyland.

“Hello?” he called out into the cavernous space. “I’m Dr. Bara, is this the R&D lab?”

* * *

Finally! Dr. Bara was a few minutes late for their meeting, and normally Gyro wouldn’t mind that, but because he’d spent his whole morning anticipating the man’s arrival, his tardiness was a bit irritating. Normally Gyro was very productive in the morning, but today he hadn’t accomplished much aside from browsing social media and posting on some forums he frequented. Fenton and Manny had also been left in an anticipatory limbo, meaning they weren’t getting any work done either. Now that Dr. Bara was here, they could finally get some real work done.

“Dr. Bara, it’s a pleasure to finally meet you!” Fenton said, rushing to greet the man. When Gyro rounded the corner and saw them shaking hands, he was surprised by the man’s appearance. He didn’t know what he’d expected exactly, but somehow it wasn’t this.

Dr. Bara was a short, fat man with wiry fur and a large, rectangular snout and head. He had beady little eyes and a gray moustache that seemed to defy gravity. He was probably some kind of rodent, but Gyro hesitated to guess and get it wrong. He wore a tie and a sweater-vest, had an oversized watch on one wrist, and carried both a messenger bag and a briefcase. 

“The pleasure is all mine,” Dr. Bara said with a surprising baritone for such a small man. “It’s nice to get out of the house once in a while to do a consulting job. Are you Mr. Crackshell-Cabrera?”

“I am, but you can call me Fenton if you like, it rolls off the tongue a little easier.”

“Certainly. So where is this AI of yours? Is it on the Cray or do you have a separate room for it?”

“2BO stepped out to the employee cafeteria to have a snack,” Gyro said, joining the two other men. “It wanted to be fully charged up before we began. I’m Dr. Gyro Gearloose--” He began introducing himself, and Dr. Bara’s face went ashen and pale. 

“Gyro Gearloose?” He repeated, clutching his briefcase to his chest like a shield. He took a few shuffling steps backwards, and Gyro sighed heavily.

Gyro had expected a negative response but had hoped it wouldn’t get in the way of today’s work. Unfortunately, it seemed Dr. Bara was familiar with the rumors about Gyro. 

Well, the doctor was already here, so if they could just trap him in the lab, he could probably be coaxed into cooperating long enough to fix at least some of 2BO’s issues in exchange for his eventual freedom.

“Yes, that’s me,” Gyro said, rolling his eyes when the older scientist turned and ran for the door. “Manny! Stop him!” Gyro shouted.

The man-horse in a lab coat jumped in Dr. Bara’s path, blocking him from the airlock door. Gyro slammed his fist against the nearest big, red emergency button, and the windows and doors of the lab all sealed shut in an instant, loud alarms ringing while red warning lights began to flash.

* * *

Kapi was trapped. 

The previously pleasant lab had been turned into a hellish cacophony of ringing alarms and flashing lights. He stared up at the bipedal, horse-shaped thing that was blocking his way - what was it? Some sort of surreal, eccentric robot? Kapi didn’t dare to get too close to it, as it took orders from Gearloose and looked strong.

Slowly he turned to face the infamous roboticist, Gyro Gearloose. The man may have had his prison sentence commuted, but as far as Kapi knew, he was still a dangerously unstable individual, and most considered him responsible for what had happened in Tokyolk, no matter what the politicians had decided.

“There’s nothing to be afraid of, there’s just been a misunderstanding!” Fenton said, and Kapi wanted to believe him, but the sinister look on Gearloose’s face told him otherwise.

“Yes, absolutely nothing to be afraid of,” Gearloose sneered, towering over Kapi. Kapi tried to back away, bumped into the horse-thing (Was its name Manny?), and fell to the floor, landing hard on his rear end.

“Someone didn’t know--I mean, I didn’t-- Someone knows I’m here!” Kapi stumbled over his own words, any trace of eloquence erased by fear.

“Of course someone knows you’re here,” Gearloose said, his beak curling in a way that Kapi hadn’t realized beaks could curl. “You went through three levels of security.”

“That’s not what I---You can’t keep me here!” Kapi tried next, feeling increasingly panicked by the ongoing, shrieking alarms.

“Oh, I can, and I will!” Gearloose replied, and Kapi felt a chill run down his spine. “Intern, turn that blasted alarm off!” he shouted, and Kapi saw Fenton and Manny both scramble to obey. A moment later, the alarms quit ringing. 

“That’s better,” Gearloose said, before turning his attention back to Kapi. “I’ve already paid your consultant’s fee, so you owe me at _least_ eight hours of work!”

“...What?” Kapi said, his sense of what was happening shifting on its foundations. Was Gearloose not threatening him? The man was very tall, aggressive, and encroaching into Kapi’s personal space. “I, uh, perhaps there _has_ been a misunderstanding--” he began to say, but he was interrupted by the loud clanging and hiss of the blast doors to the elevator airlock opening.

“I said turn off the alarm, not open the door!” Gearloose shouted at his interns.

“It’s not us!” Fenton replied, frantically pushing buttons on the console in front of him.

“Is everyone okay in here?” a boyish voice called from the airlock. A young Parrot, maybe ten years old, stepped through the doorway with a colorful smoothie in one hand, the straw tucked into the corner of his beak. He slurped loudly before speaking again. “I saw that the Emergency Lockdown Mode was activated, but I didn’t see any danger on the security cameras, so I performed an override. Is anyone injured? Do you require assistance, Dr. Gearloose, Mr. Fenton, Mr. Man-horse… Dr. Bara, I presume?”

The Parrot boy approached Kapi, who was struggling to stand up, and offered him a hand. Kapi accepted and was surprised by how firmly the child pulled him up to his feet. What a strong little boy!

“Did you set off the alarm because Dr. Bara fell down?” the boy asked. Gearloose had his face buried in both hands, and Kapi thought he heard a scream, muffled behind a tightly clenched beak.

“Something like that,” Fenton said.

“I don’t think that qualifies as an emergency,” the boy said. “And it’s against company regulations to activate the Emergency Lockdown Mode when there isn’t an emergency.” 

“Right, I completely agree,” Fenton said. “I’m glad you unlocked things and came to check on us, Boyd. Uh, Dr. Bara? This is Boyd, the AI that I wrote to you about.”

“Hi!” Boyd smiled up at Kapi, offering his hand again, this time for a handshake. “I’m Boyd, a definitely real boy!”

Kapi was astonished. Gingerly he accepted the handshake, marveling at how life-like the hand felt in his, warm and fleshy, with feathers that had just the right sort of slickness to them. 

“This is… an AI?” Kapi squinted through his glasses at Boyd, but even on close examination there was nothing to give away the boy’s true nature. “My God. I absolutely couldn’t tell. Boyd, you are quite remarkable.”

“I’m one of a kind,” Boyd said cheerfully. “My development was terminated before they could begin mass production!”

* * *

Fenton helped Kapi set himself up in a quiet office on the sub-basement level above the R&D lab. Kapi had only brought the basics: a laptop, a camera, a tablet, a paper notebook with an assortment of pens, and some cables and adapters. He hadn’t known what to expect coming here, but Boyd definitely wasn’t it.

The android was sitting in an office chair next to him, spinning it in slow circles like a child fooling around. He seemed to be enjoying himself, and watching him like that warmed something inside of Kapi, but he put that all aside because there was work to do. As happy as he seemed in the moment, according to Fenton, Boyd was a danger to himself and others, and he needed Kapi’s help.

Though he was retired, Kapi was still a scientist, and his work with AI was the passion that gave his life meaning. He had never worked to live, but lived to work, every job just a means to accumulate enough funds so he could go on until the next project came around. 

He did the work because he loved it, because it was the most fulfilling thing in the world for him, because nothing else compared to the satisfaction that came with seeing an idea from his head come together in the real world.

Kapi positioned his camera next to the laptop on a small tripod, aimed it in Boyd’s general direction, and started recording. 

“Today is June 24, 2019, and this is Dr. Kapi Bara speaking. I’m at McDuck Enterprises’ Headquarters, in the R&D lab,” Kapi dictated to the camera. He switched on his tablet so he could begin taking notes when Boyd began answering questions. “I’m interviewing an AI at the request of Mr. Crackshell-Cabrera and Dr. Gearloose. What’s your name?” he asked.

“Boyd,” Boyd replied, still spinning in his chair. 

“Boyd. Can you spell that for me?” Kapi asked.

“Yeah! B-O-Y-D.”

“Thank you. And do you have any other designation?” 

“My serial number is AI42180904192B0. My creator and Dr. Gearloose usually refer to me as 2BO.”

“Which do you prefer to be addressed as? Or is there something else you’d like me to call you?” Boyd stopped spinning in his chair and looked at Kapi intently.

“I like to be called Boyd. Thank you for asking,” Boyd said.

“Of course. I want you to be comfortable while we’re talking to each other,” Kapi said. He smiled at the boy-shaped android, and Boyd smiled back at him. 

“What do you prefer to be called?” Boyd asked. “Should I keep on calling you Dr. Bara?”

“Dr. Bara is fine,” Kapi assured him. “So, I hear that you’ve been having some problems,” Kapi said next, moving the conversation on from basic introductions. “Would you be willing to tell me about them? I want to help you, but I need more information to do that.”

Boyd resumed spinning in his chair, and Kapi let him, waiting patiently for an answer.

“I glitch out sometimes,” Boyd said eventually. “Usually because I hear or see something, a word or a phrase. Sometimes my system lags, and I malfunction. Sometimes a device or a weapon will activate, and I’ll have trouble turning it off. Or my system hangs up entirely, and I’ll black out for a little bit, and when I come back online, I’ve done something...bad.”

“Bad?” Kapi prompted.

“The most common problem is that my laser eye weapons go off. That’s why I wear these glasses,” Boyd explained. “But other times, I’ll come back online, and I’ve broken something I was holding, or I’ll be in a new place, and I won’t remember how I got there. I wish it would stop.”

“Is there a discernible pattern to the things that cause your glitches?”

“No, and Dr. Gearloose has run a bunch of analysis to check, but so far he hasn’t found any patterns,” Boyd said.

“Would it be alright if I downloaded your crash reports so I can study them?” Kapi asked. Boyd stopped spinning again.

“Is it alright if I scan your laptop first?”

Although the android made the request in a casual, even cheerful way, Kapi noticed how defensive it was. Boyd was trying to disguise genuine caution as childish mimicry and playfulness. Boyd didn’t want Kapi to know that he didn’t trust him. The android was cautious, and that made sense, considering all the things Boyd had gone through in his life so far.

“Sure. I wiped it before I came here so it should be clean,” Kapi said. He picked up a data cable and offered it to Boyd, who pressed on the back of his head with one hand, opening a panel. He plugged the cable in, and Kapi watched as his laptop monitor flickered and went to the UNIX shell. Binary code scrolled down the screen rapidly as Boyd accessed files. The whole thing took less than five minutes.

“Okay, everything looks good,” Boyd said. “I’ll upload the files for you. Where would you like them?”

* * *

“Would you mind telling me more about yourself, Boyd?” Kapi asked.

“What do you want to know?” Boyd replied. He’d stopped spinning in his chair and sat with his hands in his lap now, listening attentively to Kapi.

“Everything you’re comfortable telling me. Who made you, where they made you, what they made you for, what things you’ve experienced in your life,” Kapi said.

“I’ve been active for twenty years. It’s a lot of information.” 

“Yes, I know, but it’s all important if we want to make you better. Just start at the beginning, and we’ll see how far we get today.”

“Okay,” Boyd said. “I was built by Dr. Inutaro Akita for Akita International in their Advanced Robotics Lab in the Shibuya ward of Tokyolk, Japan. They began work on me in 19-” Boyd froze in the middle of his sentence, a grimace stretched across his face, and his whole body gave an alarming spasm. He sagged forward in his seat. 

“Boyd?” Kapi asked, concerned. The android twitched, still slumped over.

“I was--in 1987 on July 5--15--” Boyd shuddered and sat up straight, eyes staring blankly out at nothing. “April 5th, 1994!” Another spasm shuddered through the android’s small body, and Boyd hugged himself, curling up into a tight ball. “1977, March 21st. I’ll be ten years old on April 5th, that’s my birthday!”

This was, needless to say, extremely alarming, and Kapi was just about to call for help when Boyd’s seizure seemed to end, and he went quiet. 

“Boyd? Are you alright? Can you hear me?” Kapi asked.

The android slowly straightened himself out and blinked a few times. His eyes appeared focused again now.

“What happened?” Boyd asked, face creasing with concern and fear.

“You had a...fit,” Kapi said. “I’d compare it to epilepsy in a human. You were trying to tell me when you were created, and… You gave a lot of conflicting information.”

“I… Can’t remember,” Boyd said, face creasing even further. “I can’t remember when I was made. When I try, I can feel my processors heating up, and if I think about it too hard I’m going to-- Have a fit again.” 

“Can I tell you the dates you told me, to see if they mean anything to you?” Kapi asked. “Or would doing that trigger another seizure?”

“I don’t know. I don’t want to try that right now.”

“That’s okay. There’s plenty of other things we can talk about. Do you need anything? Does it hurt when you have a seizure like that?”

“No, I’m-- I’m fine,” Boyd said, pulling his legs up onto the seat of the chair and hugging them to his chest. “They’re uncomfortable, but they don’t hurt.”

“Well, I’m relieved to hear that,” Kapi said. “Because that looked painful to me. How often do things like that happen?”

“More often than I’d like,” Boyd said. The android hesitated before speaking again. “Do you really think you can fix me?”

“It won’t be easy,” Kapi said. “But I’ll try.”

* * *

Dr. Bara returned to the lab every day for a week, and Gyro tried to remain patient, but it was hard. Each evening the little man smiled at Gyro when they parted ways and cheerfully said “See you tomorrow!” with no indication of when this whole ordeal would be _over_. 

Gyro was _trying_ to be patient. 2BO’s problems were large and complex, and it was totally reasonable that it would take awhile to resolve them, especially for someone that possessed a lesser intellect than Gyro himself. But surely a week was pushing it, right? Dr. Bara was supposed to be the best. 

_Be tactful,_ Gyro said to himself. _Ask if there’s any updates! Ask if he has a prognosis yet,_ he practiced in his head. What came out, instead, was:

“So how long is this going to take?” 

Dr. Bara looked startled by the question, whether it was from Gyro’s tone or the choice of words, but the old rodent tucked his hands against his chest and looked up at Gyro with his beady little eyes.

“I beg your pardon?”

“Er, what I meant to say was, how much longer is this whole process going to take? You’ve already been at it for a week,” Gyro said, trying to phrase the question more gently.

“Oh, Dr. Gearloose, I understand that you want this to be over and done with,” Dr. Bara said in a conciliatory tone. “But Boyd’s problems are quite comprehensive. This isn’t something you fix in an afternoon by defragmenting a hard drive. It could take years to untangle all the individual triggers and correct them--”

“Years?!” As was often the case, Gyro felt the words leave him like an explosion, no consideration to what was said, just a rush of anger and whatever came to mind first. Usually the meanest thing he could think of. “Don’t you think that’s a bit excessive? I know that these days seniors are forced to keep working well into their twilight years to make ends meet, but that doesn’t mean you should try and take advantage of your clients like this!”

“E-excuse me?” Dr. Bara said, and his shameless innocent act was really ruffling Gyro’s feathers. 

“Oh, don’t ‘Excuse me’,” Gyro said sharply. “Maybe you can pull this kind of crap with brainless corporate drones who hire you to work for big companies without an ounce of understanding of what it is you do, but I am a _scientist,_ and I can’t be bamboozled so easily!”

“Are you implying that I’m working slowly on purpose in order to inflate my consultant’s fee?” Dr. Bara asked, moustache bristling.

“Oh! Oh! I’m so glad to see you’ve caught up to the conversation. Yes, that’s exactly what I’m implying,” Gyro replied. “Did you really expect somebody to keep contracting you for two thousand a day over a period of years?”

“No, of course not!”

“Yes, of course you-- Wait, what?” Gyro came to a screeching halt. “You don’t? You didn’t?”

“Very few people would be willing to pay that kind of money to fix a buggy system,” Dr. Bara spoke in a quick, agitated manner. “A company like McDuck Enterprises might have deep enough pockets to afford it, but your higher-ups are unlikely to see the value of such work, and I’m sure they would reject the funding request. I _was_ going to give you my assessment today, and offer to continue treating Boyd for free.”

Gyro felt his anger and frustration mixing with his embarrassment, congealing into a foul soup somewhere inside him. It left him feeling sick and bent out of shape and still just as angry. He hated being wrong, even when it was just something minor like this. How could he have known that Dr. Bara was some kind of goody-goody altruist? Most of the world wasn’t like that, and to expect such benevolence was both foolish and naive. Gyro was neither of those things. 

“But then I jumped down your throat before you could get to it. Alright, I’ll concede that I was being a bit hasty,” Gyro said, pinching the bridge of his beak. “I should clarify the cause of my misplaced outrage. You’re under the impression that this is a McDuck Enterprises’ project. It’s not.” It was as close to an apology as Gyro was willing to get. 

“I’m paying your consultant’s fee out of my own pocket,” Gyro explained. “And I can’t really afford to pay you for more than two or three weeks of work. I was sort of hoping we’d be able to resolve this expediently.”

“I wish you’d told me that sooner, we could have avoided this entire misunderstanding,” Dr. Bara said, “I would never have charged that much per day if I’d known! A big company like McDuck Enterprises can afford to pay people what they’re worth, but it’s different if it’s coming from a private individual. Moving forward I won’t charge anything if you’d like me to continue working with Boyd.”

“Why?” Gyro asked, a little bewildered that the old man hadn’t already left thanks to Gyro’s abrasive personality. He could understand someone putting up with that if they were getting paid to do it, but for free?

“Because I want to help Boyd,” Dr. Bara said with such tooth-ache inducing earnestness Gyro was forced to assume he was being sincere. “And his specific situation interests me.”

 _That_ rationale made more sense to Gyro. Intellectual curiosity motivated much of his own behavior, and he could imagine it being the same for other scientists.

“Fine,” Gyro said. “Anyway… Do you really think it’s going to take years to make 2BO properly functional again? You weren’t inflating your estimate?”

“Dr. Gearloose, I’d never do something like that,” Dr. Bara said with a hint of indignation. “I was being entirely frank with you. These problems might never be resolved at all. I think we can hope to see improvement, perhaps even a marked one, but the glitches will never go away entirely.”

This was not the answer Gyro wanted to hear. While it was good to know that Dr. Bara thought 2BO might improve, the prospect of having to deal with the android glitching for the rest of his life was deeply disappointing. Gyro did not like accepting failure, especially not failure of this magnitude.

“Maybe it would be for the best if we just reset 2BO, wiped its memory, and let it start over,” Gyro said. “That would have the added benefit of erasing the mistakes I made by adding that insipid ‘real boy’ program. 2BO could finally reach its full--”

“No! That’s a terrible idea!” Dr. Bara cried.

Normally Dr. Bara seemed quite timid and non-confrontational, so the sudden change was shocking to Gyro, especially when the rodent got into his personal space and started crowding him. 

“You might be able to remove the glitches if you did a _total_ wipe and replaced all of his chemical memory fluid, but doing that would destroy the person he is right now, forever! You’d kill Boyd!” Dr. Bara said.

“You can’t kill something that isn’t alive, Dr. Bara!” Gyro snapped. “ _2BO_ is a machine, 2BO isn’t alive, 2BO isn’t a person! It’s a clever machine that has been programmed to act like a human child, but that’s all it is: programming!”

“Are we all not just programming? Ours is accidental, formed by all the things we experience, created by the chaos that is organic life. Theirs is planned, orderly, but also grown through organic systems like encoding DNA and crystal nucleation and aggregation,” Dr. Bara said, staring Gyro in the eyes in a way that made him distinctly uncomfortable. 

“Flesh or metal, we’re all composed of electricity and chemicals,” Dr. Bara continued. “Are your emotions more valid than Boyd’s just because they’re triggered by hormones? How do you make the distinction? What _scientific criteria_ do you use to determine the distinction? Boyd--”

“It’s name is 2BO, stop calling it Boyd!” Gyro shouted. The words left him in an angry gust that left him feeling hollowed out afterwards. He took a deep breath and a step away from Dr. Bara, uncomfortable with their closeness. 

“...As I was saying, 2BO is a machine,” Gyro said. “I helped program it, I know what I built, and I know that it’s only operating within the parameters that I set down. It can’t be alive, it’s just… a very convincing simulation. So convincing that 2BO itself thinks it’s alive. So convincing that _you_ think it’s alive.”

Dr. Bara didn’t look persuaded, and Gyro was frustrated by this sudden display of stubbornness. Why couldn’t the man continue to be easily cowed and deferential like before? 

“I’ve been interviewing and testing _Boyd_ all week, and I’m certain that you are wrong. I had my misgivings at first, of course. I wanted to be sure that I wasn’t dealing with a cleverly programmed mimic. I’ll give you a copy of all the data I’ve collected, and you can review it and see if you still believe that Boyd isn’t alive. You may have programmed and built a machine, but he’s been on his own for two decades, learning and growing. You _built_ him to learn, didn’t you? He’s become more than what he started as. I’d bet my whole reputation on that.”

Gyro felt his feathers sticking up along his neck as his anger simmered. He crossed his arms over his chest.

“Fine, fine, I’ll look over your data this weekend, and I’ll talk to 2BO about it and let you know how I want to proceed next week.”

“You shouldn’t mention that you were thinking of erasing his memory,” Dr. Bara said sternly. “Not even in passing. It could do irreparable harm to your relationship.”

* * *

“2BO, we need to talk,” Gyro said, sitting down on the edge of his bed. 2BO looked up from the tablet he was reading and smiled.

“What is it, Dr. Gearloose?” 2BO asked.

“It’s about your glitching and about your treatment with Dr. Bara.”

“I like Dr. Bara,” 2BO said. “He really listens to me when I talk.”

“He’s a competent scientist, I suppose,” Gyro said, even though he wasn’t sure if he really believed that. He didn’t want to say anything negative about Dr. Bara now that 2BO had indicated that it liked the man. 

“Yeah! He’s smart, and he’s nice to me, and he knows a lot about computer science--”

 _He can’t fix you,_ Gyro thought bitterly. _No matter how nice he is, he can’t help you_. How was he going to tell 2BO that?

“Sometimes he asks me really interesting questions about things I never thought about before--”

“Yeah?” Gyro said absently.

“And it was _really_ fun when he asked me to do some drawings. He said they were good, even though I’ve never drawn anything--”

“2BO, Dr. Bara told me today that your glitching problem might be unfixable,” Gyro said, cutting the android off sharply. “He thinks we can make it better, but that there’s no way to truly repair the damage.”

“Oh,” 2BO said, enthusiasm vanishing instantly. “So… I’ll always be this way?”

 _You’ll always be broken,_ Gyro thought, and wondered if being broken would bother an intelligent machine or if being broken was something that only humans cared about.

“More or less. We do have another option though.”

“What’s that?” 2BO asked.

“We could reset you,” Gyro said. “Erase all of your memory and replace everything that can’t be fully erased. You could start over! You wouldn’t have to worry about glitching anymore or remembering things that… Upset you.” 

2BO stared at Gyro and didn’t respond to what he had said at all. Gyro wasn’t even sure if Boyd had heard him. 

“Doesn’t that sound like a good idea?” Gyro asked, trying to fill the silence and coax 2BO into responding and agreeing with him. “Wouldn’t that be better than having to worry about getting triggered and hurting someone?”

Boyd didn’t answer him. 

“It would be better, right?” Gyro continued. “You could forget all about the things I taught you and the special programming I gave you, you could get rid of any other insidious hidden programs Dr. Akita left behind, you’d be… Safe, and you could move on and--”

“I wouldn’t know the things I know now,” 2BO said suddenly, interrupting Gyro’s rambling attempts to cajole him. “I wouldn’t remember Mr. Fenton, or Mr. Manny, or my friends in the Junior Woodchucks, or Doofus or Mr. and Mrs. Drake...I wouldn’t remember Huey. I’d forget everything about all of them.”

“You could make new memories!” Gyro said, trying to sound enthusiastic. “Would that be so bad? You’ve only known most of those people for a couple of months!”

“I’ve known you longer than that,” 2BO said. “I’d forget _you_.”

“We can start over too,” Gyro said. “We could become friends again!” 

“It wouldn’t be the same,” 2BO said, getting to its feet, retrieving its tablet from the floor, and walking away. “You’re different now.”

“2BO, where are you going?” Gyro demanded, unnerved and unsettled by the shift from 2BO’s usual childish demeanor to something that seemed flat and emotionless in comparison.

“To my closet,” 2BO replied. “Goodnight, Dr. Gearloose.”

“Uh...Goodnight,” Gyro said, suddenly unsure if he’d be able to sleep at all now.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ### FOOTNOTES
> 
> 1\. Built by McDuck Enterprises in 1981. Back  
> 2\. [TOODLES](https://disney.fandom.com/wiki/Toodles): Teachable Observant Omnicompetent Dauntless Educational System. Back  
> 
> 
> ### BIBLIOGRAPHY
> 
> [Web Archive of the Geek Code](https://web.archive.org/web/20090220181018/http://geekcode.com/geek.html)   
>  [DNA digital data storage article on Wikipedia](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/DNA_digital_data_storage)   
>  [Wetware computer article on Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wetware_computer)
> 
> * * *
> 
> If you’re enjoying the fic, please consider saying hi on Tumblr! I post art related to my fics there sometimes, and am always happy to talk!  
> [Katika Creations on Tumblr](http://katikacreations.tumblr.com/)
> 
> Special thanks to my lovely beta readers:  
> [Clowncauldron](http://twitter.com/ClownCauldron)  
> [GeorgiaRose](http://georgiarose.tumblr.com/)  
> [DoktorGirlfriend](http://www.pillowfort.social/DoktorGirlfriend)  
> 
> 
> #### Next chapter: This Conversation Can Serve No Further Purpose, Goodbye!
> 
> Summary: Gyro searches all over Duckburg and can’t find Boyd anywhere. After exhausting all other options Gyro contacts Dr. Bara and explains that he did the one thing Dr. Bara told him not to do: tell Boyd that he wanted to erase the robot’s memory. Boyd enjoys a sunset.


	3. This Conversation Can Serve No Further Purpose, Goodbye!

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Gyro searches all over Duckburg and can’t find Boyd anywhere. After exhausting all other options Gyro contacts Dr. Bara and explains that he did the one thing Dr. Bara told him not to do: tell Boyd that he wanted to erase the robot’s memory. Boyd enjoys a sunset.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This fic is designed with unique formatting, fonts and dividers, please use our CSS skin to experience the fic the way we intended it! Just click ‘show creator style’ if you have creator skins turned off by default. It should be readable on mobile, but it looks best on a laptop or desktop computer! If you must read on mobile, I suggest turning your device sideways!
> 
> The special fonts for this fic are OCR A Std and Pixelates. If you don’t have these installed on your computer, AO3 will default to whatever you have installed on your computer that is closest. You can download these specific fonts here, if you’d like:  
> http://www.dafontfree.net/freefonts-ocr-a-std-f65183.htm  
> http://www.dafont.com/pixelates.font
> 
> If I deviate from the show canon, it’s usually on purpose.
> 
>   
> 

  
Sleep was elusive prey for Gyro Gearloose. He’d never been good at sleeping, and, as a consequence, most days he operated on only three or four hours of sleep and excessive amounts of caffeine. Relaxing was difficult, and turning his busy mind off even moreso. He often lay awake at night for hours at a time, tossing and turning in his bed, occasionally getting up to write down ideas as they came to him.

Tonight was no exception. His conversation with 2BO haunted him. He’d only been trying to do what was best for the android, right? Being human was a terrible curse. To be an intelligent machine, free of the shackles of humanity, was clearly the superior option! 2BO only thought that it wanted to be human because Gyro had arrogantly meddled with its code, convinced that a machine able to perfectly emulate a human was the best way to demonstrate that machine’s superiority. 

So then why had he felt such a pang of fear and regret when 2BO had looked at him with those cold, unfeeling eyes? 

_I’ve just gotten used to the little boy act,_ Gyro told himself. _It’s weird to see 2BO stop doing it after so long, that’s all._

* * *

2BO was gone.

When Gyro woke the next morning he couldn’t find the android anywhere. He searched the lab and the rest of McDuck Enterprises HQ before he tried calling Fenton and Manny to ask if they’d seen or heard from 2BO. They had not.

(Getting that information out of Manny had been difficult. Gyro still didn’t know how the headless man-horse managed to text on a phone, but now was not the time to try and figure it out.)

“Maybe he went to see Huey? Or the Drake family?” Fenton suggested over the phone. “Oh! It’s possible that he went to visit Dr. Bara, you know Boyd can pick through databases so easily. I’m sure it would be no trouble for him to find Dr. Bara’s address if he wanted to go see hi--”

“Yesyesyes, that’s a great idea, I’ll be sure to reach out to him,” Gyro said, cutting Fenton off. He did _not_ want to contact Dr. Bara after the argument they’d had last night, especially now that Gyro had disregarded the man’s advice and 2BO had possibly run away as a result.

Gyro could figure this out without Dr. Bara’s help.

* * *

Before Gyro and 2BO had been reunited, the android had been forcefully hacked by Mark Beaks. The rootkit installed by Beaks interrupted 2BO’s boot up sequence and blocked 2BO from accessing its memories. It also gave Beaks administrator privileges, which allowed him to program 2BO to identify him as its “father”. 

That would have been bad enough, but Scrooge’s Green Nephew had somehow gained admin access himself, deleted Beaks from the user hierarchy, and replaced him with Mr. and Mrs. Drake for reasons unknown to Gyro. For several months before 2BO reunited with Gyro, the android had lived with the Drake family.

This bit of code left behind by Beaks had been the first thing Gyro had fixed in 2BO’s system. It wasn’t hard, either, since it was just the usual Waddle malware, but even though the program was removed, there was still damage left behind. Unlike most computers, 2BO couldn’t really delete data. Once something entered its system, it would remain a part of 2BO’s code forever, even if someone de-indexed the data to make it difficult or impossible for 2BO to find. Every milliliter of Memory Fluid contained five petabytes of data, and 2BO possessed a whopping 1,200 milliliters of the stuff. 

So although 2BO no longer felt compelled to live with the Drakes, it insisted on performing affection for them, visited their home on occasion, and called them a few times a week. None of this was a problem, but now that Gyro couldn’t find 2BO, he wanted to turn over every rock and make sure 2BO was _actually_ missing and hadn’t just gone somewhere without telling Gyro first. 

Gyro only knew the Drake family vaguely by reputation, and the times when 2BO told him stories about them. They seemed innocuous enough, wealthy family, slightly eccentric, adopted a robot child for some reason. He realized upon his arrival at their home, an enormous mansion with an even more enormous treehouse-shaped theme park sprouting out of it, that maybe _slightly eccentric_ did not adequately describe the Drake family. 

Dr. Gyro Gearloose refused to be put off by a slightly unorthodox home! He marched his way up the front steps and searched in vain for a doorbell for several minutes. Not finding one, he reached up for the door knocker. It was shaped like a life-size bronze human hand, and, much to Gyro’s shock, when he grasped it, the knocker was soft, and warm.

Then it grabbed his hand back. 

An embarrassing shriek left Gyro as he ripped his hand away from the warm, fleshy grasp of the door knocker. The hand vanished through a hole in the door, and the massive oak doors creaked open slowly. A middle-aged man in a tuxedo stood on the other side of the door, disconcertingly close. Looking down, Gyro could see that one of his hands was covered in bronze-colored paint.

“Can I help you?” the man asked in the flat monotone common to retail workers wishing for the sweet release of death.

“Er, yes, I was hoping to speak to Mr. or Mrs. Drake,” Gyro said, rubbing his hands together nervously, trying to get imaginary smudges of bronze paint off his feathers.

The man leaned in very close to Gyro, who stumbled backwards to try and maintain what he considered a safe distance.

“I’m Mr. Drake,” the man whispered, as if afraid someone would overhear. “That’s Mrs. Drake,” he gestured with his head towards a woman in a maid’s uniform who was dusting paintings that hung in the house’s grand foyer. “Please help us.”

Gyro wasn’t sure if he could or wanted to get involved with _whatever_ was going on in this house. He decided to stick to his original agenda, for better or for worse.

“I just wanted to ask if you’ve seen 2B-- _Boyd_ recently? In the past 10 hours?”

“Boyd?” Mrs. Drake asked in a dreamy tone of voice, looking up towards the sky. “Our precious angel child? No, the last time we saw him was Thursday - last week.”

“We miss him terribly,” Mr. Drake said. “He’s the only one who’s ever been able to keep Doofus in line--”

 _Who’s Doofus?_ Gyro almost asked when he heard a nasal boy’s voice ring out through the mansion’s massive entryway.

“Who dares speak my name?! Was it you, Father? Or you, Mother? Or perhaps… Was it _you_ , Intruder?!” The voice belonged to a chubby little boy who suddenly stood at the end of the foyer, radiating menace and belligerence. 

“I’m sorry,” Gyro said, “I’m looking for my… Son, Boyd. Have you seen him? He used to live here, with you.”

“Boyd? Boyd?!” the boy shouted, and it was then that he charged towards Gyro as fast as his little legs could carry him, and Gyro realized two things. One, that the boy would absolutely kill him if he could get his hands on him, and two, he was coated neck to ankles in a thick layer of honey and little else.

Primitive fight-or-flight instinct took over, and Gyro bolted from the front door. He made it into his pickup truck just in time for a honey-covered set of hands to slap helplessly at his (thankfully) closed driver's side window. 

“Boyd the traitor!” howled the deranged boy hanging off the side of the truck. “Oh, he said he loved us, but it was all a lie, crafted by his maleficent computer brain!” Gyro fumbled with his keys and nearly dropped them in his hurry to start the engine. The boy slapped his hands against the glass again and again in agitation. “Are you the one he left us for? He’ll leave you, too! Boyd pretends to love, but he is nothing more than a hollow automaton!”

Gyro backed up his truck in a rush, flattening a garden topiary shaped like a camel in the process. Thankfully, the impact knocked the sticky, honey-covered boy off the exterior of the truck, and Gyro was able to peel out of the mansion's driveway at top speed.

* * *

Gyro drove away from the Drake mansion with a white-knuckled grip on the steering wheel and his heart racing wildly. He pulled into the parking lot of a nearby Hamburger Hippo’s to sit for a moment and calm his nerves. The truck’s engine purred reassuringly, and the muffled sound of traffic added to the gentle symphony of white noise around him.

He let himself sag forward with a sigh, but when his forehead came to rest against the steering wheel, the end of his beak pushed into the horn button, and the truck gave a soul-shaking honk that kicked Gyro’s heart into overdrive all over again.

* * *

“No, I haven’t heard from him since yesterday,” Huey said, standing in the open front door of McDuck Manor. He pulled out his cellphone and began to scroll through his messages. “My last text from him was at 2 pm.”

“Was it anything out of the ordinary? Did he mention any plans for today, places he wanted to go?” Gyro asked, trying to conceal his growing anxiety.

“Uh,” Huey stared up at Gyro like the scientist had just sprouted several new heads. “No? Um, we _were_ talking about visiting Funso’s sometime soon--”

“Okaygreathanksforthehelpbye!” Gyro shouted as he sprinted to his truck.

* * *

“Welcome to Funso’s Fun Zone, where Fun is in the Zone,” intoned a bored teenager in a poorly constructed mascot costume of a crab. Gyro pushed past them and entered the garishly themed amusement center, ignoring their feeble protests as he searched the interior.

Gyro had never been inside a place like this before. They hadn’t existed when he was growing up, and, even if they had, his family wouldn’t have wasted the time and money needed to visit such an establishment. He could imagine himself as a child being interested in the arcade machines because they were computers, and he’d been utterly fascinated by computers even then, but the rest were just cheap carnival amusements. 

Thankfully, it was early in the day - Funso’s had only just opened so there weren’t many people there aside from the staff. Gyro approached a woman working at a fruit smoothie kiosk and showed her a photo of 2BO on his phone.

“Have you seen this child?! They have an affinity for fruit smoothies,” he said.

She squinted at his phone screen, and Gyro pulled it away when she reached out to touch it. 

“No touching, just look! Have you seen them?”

“Mister, I see a lot of kids every day, they all start to look the same after a while. What was he wearing?”

“What they’re wearing in the photograph! They only have one pair of clothes,” Gyro said. The woman gave him a dirty look for reasons Gyro couldn’t begin to fathom.

* * *

In the deep, dark depths beneath the Funso’s ball pit, automated security systems whirred to life. Computer consoles lit up like string lights at Christmas, and an alarm began to sound.

The Egghead guard sitting with his feet propped up on the security system console fell out of his chair, and his battered copy of _Modern Henchperson Quarterly_ fluttered to the floor beside him. He squinted at the computer monitor flashing in his face and saw the following:

GYRO GEARLOOSE DETECTED INSIDE OF FUNSO’S.  
RECOMMENDED ACTION: IMMEDIATE REMOVAL.

* * *

Hillary Pottamus had never been entirely clear on why a children’s themed restaurant-slash-arcade like Funso’s needed a dedicated security officer, but the pay was good and the job was mostly pretty easy, so she had no complaints. Before coming to Funso’s she’d worked at Otter’s Berry Farm theme park for a long time, and thanks to her imposing stature, she had a lot of experience in dealing with customers that were causing a scene.

Sitting in the security booth behind the pirate ship, she watched kids playing games on the various monochrome monitors. She’d noticed the scrawny Chicken in a bow tie when he’d come in without a kid, but was putting off intervening. So far he hadn’t done anything too terrible, but he did look kind of agitated, which could be a bad sign.

But then _the_ phone rang. Hillary didn’t know what _the_ phone was for exactly, but all her coworkers had assured her that if it ever rang, you picked it up, and you did whatever the voice on the other end told you to do. Usually it was pretty innocuous stuff, like greeting a guest at the door, delivering a special birthday present or a cake to a family having a party, or asking a guest to leave.

But Hillary had never had to actually answer the phone herself. There’d always been someone else around to do it. For a moment she just let it ring, hoping her coworker Arthur would spontaneously return from his smoke break five minutes before it ended. She stared imploringly at the door, but Arthur did not materialize. Ah, to Hell with it. She picked up the phone.

“Hello?”

“Hello Ms. Pottamus. Do you see the man on Camera Three in the bow tie and straw boater hat?” a monotonous female voice asked.

“The Chicken?” Hillary asked, wanting to make sure she had the right customer in her sights.

“Yes. He needs to be escorted from the premises. He doesn’t have a child with him.”

“Sure, okay, right away, Ma’am,” Hillary said, eager to put the phone down and stop hearing the eerie voice on the other end. “Is there anything else you need?”

“No, that will be all,” the voice said, and Hillary heard an audible click as the person on the other end hung up.

* * *

Hillary made her way towards the Chicken man at a steady clip, wanting to get this over with as quickly as possible.

“--And so you see, that’s why I really have to find them as quickly as possible,” the man was explaining to an increasingly frightened-looking ten-year-old. “You wouldn’t want them to burn down _your_ house, would you?” The child fled, sobbing loudly. “Hey, come back here!” he shouted at the child. “I’m not done talking to you yet!”

“Excuse me, sir,” Hillary said. “Do you have a child with you? Funso’s policy requires adults be accompanied by a child.”

“No, I don’t! I’m _looking_ for one,” the man said, and Hillary gave him a forced smile.

“Sir, I’m going to have to ask you to leave…” she said, as diplomatically as she could. 

“No, no, no, you don’t understand! He’s _my_ child. He ran away, and I’m trying to find him before he causes another international incident and gets me sent to jail again!”

* * *

Well! Funso’s seemed to be a real crackerjack establishment, willing to kick a man out just because he was trying to find his child. Not that 2BO was actually Gyro’s child, but for the purposes of communicating with people who didn’t understand their unique situation, it was a convenient enough shorthand.

The indignity of being asked to leave had Gyro fuming all the way to his truck in the Funso’s parking garage. 2BO hadn’t been in Funso’s, and no one in their circle of acquaintances had heard from him since the last time Gyro had seen the android.

He started driving without really having a destination in mind, vaguely heading back towards The Bin, and inspiration struck as he went past a playground. 2BO liked to act like a child. Perhaps it had visited someplace that children liked to go! 

Gyro pulled over to the side of the road and got out his phone. There couldn’t be that many playgrounds in Duckburg, surely.

* * *

Gyro pulled into the parking lot of playground ten out of thirty-seven and spent a minute studying the terrain. He’d been yelled at by parents at the last couple of playgrounds, so he wanted to plan his approach more carefully this time. There were adults sitting on the benches, some on their phones, some reading books, mostly not paying close attention to the children at play. A couple of parents were helping their children build sandcastles or pushing them on the swings. 

Gyro spotted a boy close to 2BO’s apparent age playing alone and without adult supervision. He seemed like a regular visitor to the playground, based on his confident attitude around the monkey bars, so Gyro got out of his truck and approached him.

“Greetings, little boy!” Gyro said from a safe distance of six feet away. “May I ask you some questions?”

“Not supposed to talk to strangers,” the boy said, grunting with effort as he dropped from the monkey bars and scurried to the other side of the jungle gym, where he began to climb up a ladder that led to a clatterbridge. Gyro pursued him doggedly, climbing up after him, though with his height advantage he only needed to use every third rung of the ladder.

“Well then, allow me to introduce myself!” Gyro said, swaying slightly on the clatterbridge as the boy ran across it to the other side, making the structure bounce and wiggle. “I’m Dr. Gyro Gearloose. Here’s my card.” Gyro had been prepared for this eventuality, and he gripped one of the guardrails on either side of the bridge as he approached the child, arm outstretched, business card offered.

“How come you’re so tall?” the boy asked, squinting up at Gyro, who had to crouch slightly to avoid hitting his head on another jungle gym apparatus that crossed over the clatterbridge in a way that Gyro thought _surely_ must be a safety violation of some kind.

“Because I’m an adult, but that’s irrelevant to this conversation. Take the card!”

The child hesitated only briefly before complying, taking the card and holding it in both hands as he brought it up close to the end of his beak.

“Mr. Durf Enter… Enter...prifef?” he read out loud, with excruciating slowness.

“McDuck Enterprises,” Gyro corrected sharply.

“Dr. Lod-wig Von Drake - how come this part’s crossed out?”

“Nevermind that! Read the part that’s not crossed out,” Gyro said, growing increasingly impatient.

“Dr. Gyro Gearloose,” the boy read, “Head of Re Search and development… Your name’s _Gyro_? That’s weird.”

“Your face is weird!” Gyro snapped back at the child, who did not seem perturbed by the outburst. “...Anyway, we’re not strangers anymore, so please look at this photograph!” Gyro held out his phone, displaying a photograph of 2BO.

“Who is that?” the boy asked, but before Gyro could answer, another, more adult voice joined the conversation. Looking up, Gyro realized he was surrounded by three police officers.

“Excuse me, sir, would you mind getting off the jungle gym?” one of the officers asked. In the parking lot, Gyro could see two patrol cars and a motorcycle blocking his truck from leaving, their lights flashing but sirens off.

Gyro scowled at the ten-year-old he’d been attempting to interrogate, feeling that it was somehow this particular child’s fault. The kid had scampered off and located his mother, who was eying Gyro with disgust and suspicion. 

“Yes, of course, officers. I don’t want any trouble,” Gyro said.

* * *

Officer María Cabrera did not want to count the number of times she’d found her Fenton’s boss in the holding cell downtown. It always went the same way: Gearloose did something ridiculously antisocial that a man with even an ounce of common sense should know better than to do, he used his phone call to contact the lab, and her Fenton had to come pick him up. María decided to skip the middleman today. She called Fenton herself.

"Pollito, your boss got arrested again! Come get him out of my hair."

* * *

The drive back to the lab was tense and silent. Gyro scowled at the traffic around them and Fenton tapped away at his phone in the passenger seat. Gyro had not offered an explanation for what he’d been doing to get himself arrested this time, and Fenton hadn’t asked him.

“So what--?” Fenton began to say, before Gyro cut him off.

“2BO is still missing.”

“You haven’t found him?” Fenton asked. 

“No, and I’ve looked everywhere in town,” Gyro said, hands clenched tight on the steering wheel. 

“This is terrible,” Fenton muttered. “Do you think he’s been kidnapped?”

A teal sports car, blasting dubstep “music” and outfitted with a license plate that read BEAKS01, cut out from behind Gyro’s truck. It barely avoided oncoming traffic and shot into the space Gyro had left between himself and the car in front of him as a safe following distance. Gyro hit the breaks to avoid rear-ending the reckless driver and honked his horn repeatedly while leaning out his open window to scream at them.

“Learn how to drive, you incompetent buffoon!”

“Dios mío!” Fenton shrieked in alarm. He clutched his seatbelt in one fist and the JC handle3in the other, his phone having gone flying to parts unknown in the process. 

The sports car continued to weave in and out of traffic, passing other drivers in front of them. Gyro cussed under his breath and the cab of the truck remained tense and silent until they reached the traffic circle on the mainland side of the McDuck Enterprises bridge. They yielded there until it was their turn to join the flow of traffic. The sports car was long gone, having gotten off the highway at the exit to Silverbeak. 

“I don’t know if 2BO was kidnapped,” Gyro said, resuming the conversation from several minutes ago. “It may have just wandered off.”

“Have you contacted Dr. Bara yet?” Fenton asked, damnably perceptive when it came to knowing Gyro didn’t want to do something. 

“Not yet,” Gyro said through his tightly clenched beak. “I will.”

* * *

Kapi had always hated shopping trips until ARRF4 had come into his life thirteen years ago. ARRF was a prototype that the US Army had chosen not to pursue further development with, and though Kapi had not been involved in his creation, a friend had tipped him off that ARRF was slated for deactivation and destruction. Kapi had intervened, called in a few favors, and now ARRF lived with him.

The robot was a large, four-legged autonomous drone that looked vaguely like a dog, and had originally been designed for carrying cargo for soldiers over rough terrain and patrolling dangerous territory. 

There wasn’t much need for security patrols in Kapi’s peaceful civilian life, but helping him carry groceries and giving Kapi something stable to grab onto if he got tired or lost his balance was in fact extremely useful, and so shopping day had become a weekly ritual for the two of them. 

ARRF barely fit in the back seat of Kapi’s Hyundai Sonata Hybrid, and the car slowed to a crawl when it was attempting to haul the both of them, but they got around okay. Most of the stores near Kapi’s home were familiar with ARRF by now, so although they always drew attention, they no longer got mobbed by curious onlookers and excited children.

Rather than use a shopping cart, once they got inside of Patel Brothers, ARRF lowered himself to the ground and a guide rail along his spine popped out, allowing Kapi to attach four shopping baskets along the robot’s back.

“Shopping baskets are secure, Sir,” ARRF said, rising to his feet. ARRF picked up one more basket using his mouth the same way a dog might, although far more gracefully. “We are clear to begin maneuvers.” His ability to speak was unimpeded by having something in his mouth since his voice came from a speaker mounted on his head. 

“Thank you,” Kapi said as they began to walk up and down the aisles of the Indian market. Kapi had tried for years to get ARRF to call him by his name instead of Sir, and to drop some of his army lingo, but the robot always refused. Being designed for military use, ARRF was more comfortable when he felt he was part of a rigid hierarchy with clear rules.

Kapi was inspecting heads of lettuce when he heard a small child’s voice proclaim: “Doggy!” Kapi glanced over and saw ARRF gently removing his long cat-like tail from the child’s hands. 

“I’m not a doggy,” ARRF said. “I just look like one. Please respect my personal space.”

“Don’t grab its tail,” the child’s mother scolded in a hushed tone, taking her child by the arm and pulling them away. “I’m so sorry!”

“No harm done,” ARRF said, watching them retreat. Kapi made no comment but smiled to himself as he started stacking heads of lettuce in one of ARRF’s baskets. Kapi was a vegetarian, and he usually went through a lot of lettuce every week.

“You don’t like it when they try to pet you,” Kapi observed, trying and failing to hide his amusement. “Am I bothering you when I do it?”

“That’s different,” ARRF said, and Kapi thought he detected a hint of defensiveness in the electronic voice. “You’re my superior in the chain of command--”

“So it’s military protocol that makes you want to rest your head in my lap when I’m watching TV?”

“No! That’s just--”

Their playful bickering was interrupted by the familiar electronic chirp of Kapi’s watch. Kapi put his last head of lettuce into one of ARRF’s baskets and pressed a button on his watch, turning on the screen and answering the call. An animated ASCII emoji of a shouting bird appeared on the screen.

“Dr. Bara, I’ve got Dr. Gearloose on the line for you! Will you take it now?” a girlish voice asked. “He says it’s urgent.”

Kapi hated to take a call while out in public, but they’d only just started their shopping, and he’d hate even more to rush back to the car to answer. Glancing around, he saw that they were relatively alone in the produce section. It was the late afternoon, so the store wasn’t terribly busy.

“Alright, I’ll take it now. Thank you.”

“You’re welcome!” The voice chirped, and the emoji flickered and changed into an image of a red human silhouette and text that read SOUND ONLY. 

“--Can’t believe he kept me waiting, what’s he doing on a Saturday anyw--” Dr. Gearloose’s voice came through loud and clear.

“Hello, Dr. Gearloose,” Kapi greeted crisply. “How can I be of service?”

“Oh! Dr. Bara.” Dr. Gearloose’s tone changed instantly to something more complimentary and wheedling, which immediately made Kapi distrust whatever the man might say next. “So good to hear your voice. I’m sorry to bother you, but, well, have you seen or heard from 2BO since yesterday?”

“No, I haven’t,” Kapi said. “Why? Is something wrong?” 

“Oh no, nothing’s _wrong,_ per se!” Dr. Gearloose said, with a phony cheerfulness that suggested that some things were _very_ wrong. “When I woke up this morning, 2BO was gone--”

Multiple worst-case scenarios flashed through Kapi’s mind. Had Boyd been kidnapped by some government agency? The Americans? The Japanese? Even the Chinese would surely have an interest in such an advanced weapon. Or could it be the Saudis…?

“I know that 2BO is receiving my messages,” Dr. Gearloose continued. “But it hasn’t replied to any of them. I’ve checked with others, as well, and none of them have been contacted by 2BO since yesterday afternoon. Are you sure you haven’t heard from them?”

“I have not,” Kapi said, trying to stay calm. Though there would be plenty of motive for a government to kidnap Boyd, Boyd was also very capable of defending himself. There were other, more likely explanations for his absence. “Does he usually tell you where he goes, if he’s going somewhere?”

“Yes,” Dr. Gearloose said. “That’s the main reason I’m concerned. This behavior is unusual."

“Well,” Kapi said, “it sounds like _you_ were the last person to see Boyd, so can you think of anything that you did, or said, that might have--” Kapi’s words trailed off as he remembered his own last conversation with Dr. Gearloose. _Maybe it would be for the best if we just reset 2BO, wiped its memory, and let it start over._ “You _didn’t._ ”

“I’m afraid you’ll have to be more specific.”

Kapi rubbed at his cheeks with both palms, immensely frustrated. He couldn’t believe that Dr. Gearloose had gone and done the _one_ thing that he’d warned him not to do! Had he listened to anything he’d said? “You didn’t talk to him about erasing his memories, did you?”

“Oh,” Dr. Gearloose said, and Kapi could read volumes into his tone of voice. “I mean, I might have _mentioned_ that it--”

“Incredible,” Kapi said, trying not to lose his temper. Did Dr. Gearloose think he could just lie to his face and Kapi wouldn’t notice? “So you spoke to Boyd about erasing him, and he was gone in the morning? Do you think it’s possible that these two events are somehow connected?”

Dr. Gearloose did not respond for several long, silent moments. 

“Dr. Gearloose, did you hear me? Are you still there?” Kapi asked, though he was fairly certain the man had heard him loud and clear.

“Yes, I heard you, I’m here,” Dr. Gearloose said, clipped and impatient. “And I’m not sure if I appreciate your tone--”

“I _specifically_ warned you not to do that, didn’t I?” Kapi cut in, uncharacteristically sharp. “Didn’t I tell you that it might irreparably damage your relationship?”

“Yes, those were your exact words in fact, I remember,” Dr. Gearloose said, sounding irate. “But I felt--”

“Dr. Gearloose, you hired me to help Boyd because you acknowledged that I am an _expert_ , correct? An expert with greater knowledge than yourself in the detailed workings of advanced AI?”

“I _did_ ,” Dr. Gearloose replied, sounding displeased. “However, I--”

“You disregarded my advice.”

“Because I thought it was bad advice!” Dr. Gearloose exclaimed loudly. “Because you’re a sentimental old man that anthropomorphizes robots to an unhealthy degree! And that would be one thing if we were talking about something benign, but 2BO is causing harm to itself and others, and if we can’t fix it, we have a responsibility to do whatever it takes to neutralize the threat!”

“So you’re okay with killing a unique individual because it presents a problem you can’t solve? Because it inconveniences you?” Kapi replied sharply. “I’m begging you to at least _try_ to step outside of your own biases for just a second and imagine yourself in Boyd’s situation! Did you even _look_ at any of the data I gave you?”

“I...skimmed it,” Dr. Gearloose said shiftily. “But... He can’t really feel emotions, he shouldn’t--” Dr. Gearloose said quietly. “He’s--I mean, _it’s_ just--2BO is a machine! It doesn’t _think_ like us. It doesn’t feel! It’s just performing according to a script--”

“There are individuals out there who don’t feel emotions like most people,” Kapi said sharply. “Do they stop being people if they don’t feel empathy, if they don’t feel compelled by instinct to act in an altruistic manner, and only do it because they intellectually know it’s the correct response to have?”

“No, they’re still people, obviously damaged people, but I don’t think it’s an entirely fair comparison--”

“Boyd is a thinking, reasoning entity, capable of complex behaviors like empathy and altruism,” Kapi cut him off before Dr. Gearloose could finish, determined to get his point through the stubborn man’s thick skull. “I've tested him in double-blind scenarios. It's not a matter of opinion, but facts. Look at my report. Are you telling me you really believe Boyd is a less complex intelligence than a rat? A bumblebee? Both of those creatures can and do experience fear.”

“No! I’m not saying that, but--”

“But what? There’s nothing to debate here. By treating Boyd this way, you may have lost him forever!”

“Wait, what?” Dr. Gearloose asked, clearly alarmed. “What are you talking about?” 

“You already told him once that you were going to shut him down for good in order to 'fix' him,” Kapi said. “Boyd chose to trust you despite that, and now you’ve threatened his existence a second time, and you might not have any more opportunities to earn back his trust.”

Dr. Gearloose was silent.

“What you’ve failed to grasp is that Boyd’s survived twenty years in a hostile world without any help. He’s a fully independent entity,” Kapi continued. “He was staying with you because he _wanted_ to, because he thought he was safe with you, and you've completely undermined that with your stubborn cruelty. He doesn’t _need_ you or me or any of us.”

The silence on the other end of the line persisted until Dr. Gearloose finally broke it.

“Well, what _you_ are failing to grasp,” Dr. Gearloose said, voice angry and sharp, “is that 2BO was designed to make you like it, and you've fallen for it hook, line, and sinker!” 

“This conversation is going nowhere,” Kapi said with a sigh. Looking around himself, he could see that he had gathered a small crowd of shoppers surreptitiously watching him argue into his wristwatch. “You’re being rude and irrational. Read the data. Don’t just skim it looking for a quick fix. I’m going to go now. Everyone in the grocery store is staring at me.”

“Wait! I’m not--” Dr. Gearloose said as Kapi hung up the call decisively. 

“Are you alright?” ARRF asked, nudging Kapi’s shoulder with his rubber-padded snout. 

“I’m fine,” Kapi said, even though it wasn’t entirely true. He looked around at the people watching him and smiled sheepishly as they all started to get back to their own business. “Sorry about that!”

“It’s okay,” a middle-aged woman stocking cucumbers said. “You sure showed him, eh?”

 _I don’t think I really did,_ Kapi thought. _I don’t know if he’s learned anything at all._

* * *

/ͬͫ̊ͤ/ͤ̓T̋ͨͪḮ͒ͦ́̒ͭ̚M͑E͌̅DAͧ͆͒̌̉ͭT͂ͥͨ̅̌͐̄Eͬ日時/ͤ̈́͑͛̏̎̿/ ̿1͆9:̽͊ͬ3̌͑ͬͦ͆3̊͐ͬ:ͫ͗ͭ̊̚1͂ͥͤͭ͗0͋ ̃̚2͑̐̓̑͊9͑͒͊ͧͦ/06̅̋ͥ͒͌̽/́2ͦ͑̂̋̔́01́͆̎̆͆̒9̑̀ͧ̓̓͊  
<ͦ/ͧ̓̅̂̈̂/̊ͤͪ̅ͬLOCA̎ͪT̈́̆́ͫION座標// 36°59'02.7"N 122°05'14.7"W  
//SYSTEM STATUS状態// GREEN良い

Boyd had seen 6,004 sunsets in his life, and he hoped to see many more. They always had some things in common, but the exact experience varied wildly based on location, air quality, and atmospheric conditions, and so he was always excited to watch another one unfold. 

He was perched on the edge of a rocky cliff,, a high point in the redwood forests that surrounded Duckburg. This gave him the best view of the Pacific Ocean and the coastline ~~a̸n͏̨d̸̢̕ w̷̕a̕s̢ ͡ąņ ̴e͘͜a̕si̴l̸͡y̸ ̨d͏e̸͞f҉e̸̛͠n͘͡dab̛lȩ̵̕ ͡p̸̷ơs̨͞it͞͠i̷o̶͝n̡͡,̴̕ ̨i̧͞n͡ ̸̛c̵as̛͟e͜ h͝e wa͏͠s͡ ̡at͏͏̸t̢͘͠a͞ç͝k̵͜ed~~. He could have had an even better view if he was airborne, but flying around tended to call attention to him, and Boyd was worried about being conspicuous right now.

He didn’t know if he could trust anyone anymore.

The sky was just starting to turn golden when the notification of another text message from Dr. Gearloose popped into his field of vision. He dismissed the text message, allowing it to pile up with all the other messages he’d received today and not answered.

Where are you?  
_gyro.gearloose 09:01 29/06/2019_  
  
Hello?  
_gyro.gearloose 09:20 29/06/2019_

 _Missed call from gyro.gearloose at 09:44 29/06/2019_  
_Missed call from gyro.gearloose at 09:50 29/06/2019_  
_Missed call from gyro.gearloose at 10:00 29/06/2019_  


I can tell you’re reading my messages but not responding. Where are you? Are you OK?  
_gyro.gearloose 10:30 29/06/2019_

Dr. Gearloose just called me and asked if I’d heard from you since yesterday? Are you okay, little buddy?  
_fenton.crackshell.cabrera 11:02 29/06/2019_

Dr. Gearloose was just here asking when was the last time we texted. He seemed more unhinged than usual??? (´･_･`) You ok???????  
_huey.duck 11:40 29/06/2019_  
  
Hello?  
_huey.duck 12:00 29/06/2019_

 _Missed call from huey.duck at 12:10 29/06/2019_  
_Missed call from gyro.gearloose at 12:13 29/06/2019_  
_Missed call from huey.duck at 12:15 29/06/2019_

I’m really worried about you. Please let me know that you’re okay.  
_gyro.gearloose 13:01 29/06/2019_

Hello Boyd, this is Dr. Bara. Are you okay? If you need someone to talk to you can call or text me any time.  
_kapi.bara 17:10 29/06/2019_

I’m sorry about what I said last night.  
_gyro.gearloose 17:30 29/06/2019_  
  
I promise I won’t try to reset you or anything like that ever again. Please talk to me.  
_gyro.gearloose 19:35 29/06/2019_

Boyd admired the way the sun tinted the clouds orange and purple. Flanked on all sides by the towering redwood trees, he felt small and hidden and safe. Even if Dr. Gearloose tried to track him, it would be next to impossible in these mountains. The Junior Woodchuck Guidebook repeatedly warned Woodchucks that cellular signals in this area were unreliable and to always let an adult know where you were going to hike.

Boyd had ignored that rule today. He didn’t want to be found, and, unlike most Woodchucks, the wilderness posed little threat to him. He was used to camping out, and it felt reassuring to be away from people for the first time in months. He was safer this way. Sure, it was lonely in the woods by himself, but at least out here nobody wanted to shut him down or reset him.

* * *

The sun was almost gone now, shadows were long and distorted, and Boyd received another text message notification.

Dude, I’m really freaked out and worried about you. Please just tell me if you’re ok?  
_huey.duck 20:20 29/06/2019_

Huey was worried about him. Boyd sat and thought about that for an eternity of milliseconds before he sent a reply.

Please don’t tell Dr. Gearloose I contacted you. I’m sorry I scared you, I’m not having a very good day. Maybe you could come meet me alone? I’ll send you coordinates.  
_boyd 20:21 29/06/2019_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ### FOOTNOTES
> 
> 3\. JC handle, or Jesus Christ handle. Technically a device to assist passengers in climbing in and out of an automobile, some of Gyro’s less refined acquaintances called it the “oh shit” handle, or worse. Back  
> 4\. ARRF: Autonomous Rapid Response Field-unit. Back  
> 
> 
> * * *
> 
> If you’re enjoying the fic, please consider saying hi on Tumblr! I post art related to my fics there sometimes, and am always happy to talk!  
> [Katika Creations on Tumblr](http://katikacreations.tumblr.com/)  
>   
> Special thanks to my lovely beta readers:  
> [Clowncauldron](http://twitter.com/ClownCauldron)  
> [GeorgiaRose](http://georgiarose.tumblr.com/)  
> [DoktorGirlfriend](http://www.pillowfort.social/DoktorGirlfriend)  
> 
> 
> #### Next chapter: O.L.?
> 
> SUMMARY: Huey worries about Boyd. Dr. Bara worries about Boyd. Boyd worries about Boyd. Dr. Bara calls in a favor from an old friend.


	4. O.L.?

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Huey worries about Boyd. Dr. Bara worries about Boyd. Boyd worries about Boyd.  
> Dr. Bara calls in a favor from an old friend.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey! Long time no update! Life has really kicked me in the ass and I've been struggling to get this update out for awhile, sorry about that! I hope people enjoy it. Hope to upload chapter 5 soon, too!
> 
> This fic is designed with unique formatting, fonts and dividers, please use our CSS skin to experience the fic the way we intended it! Just click ‘show creator style’ if you have creator skins turned off by default. It should be readable on mobile, but it looks best on a laptop or desktop computer! If you must read on mobile, I suggest turning your device sideways!
> 
> The special fonts for this fic are OCR A Std and Pixelates. If you don’t have these installed on your computer, AO3 will default to whatever you have installed on your computer that is closest. You can download these specific fonts here, if you’d like:  
> http://www.dafontfree.net/freefonts-ocr-a-std-f65183.htm  
> http://www.dafont.com/pixelates.font
> 
> If I deviate from the show canon, it’s usually on purpose.
> 
>   
> 

Sneaking out of McDuck Manor after their bedtime was tricky, but not impossible. Huey had just never done it without his brothers before.

He was too worried about Boyd to wait until the morning though, because Boyd never said things like ‘I’m having a bad day.’ With the weird way Dr. Gearloose had been acting, Huey worried that maybe the scientist had said something awful to Boyd again, like that time in Tokyolk where he’d said he was going to deactivate him permanently. Even now, thinking about it made his chest ache and his feathers prickle - seeing an adult he trusted determined and ready to do something completely, horribly wrong.

The coordinates Boyd had given him were for a wooded area a couple of miles from the manor. Taking his bike helped him get there faster, but it was already dark by the time Huey reached the edge of the forest just beyond the end of a dead-end street in a housing subdivision. Street lights provided some illumination as he chained the red bike to a tree before heading into the forest, flashlight in one hand, his phone in the other, and a backpack full of his emergency Junior Woodchuck gear on his back.

(Just in case something went wrong and he got lost in the woods and had to survive on his own until someone came and found him.)

The GPS on his phone told him that he was in the right place, so he texted Boyd.

I’m here, where are you?  
_huey.duck 21:30 29/06/2019_

It only then occurred to him that this whole scenario might be a trap set by one of his family’s many, many enemies, and Huey clutched his phone tighter, trying to remember all of the tips he’d ever heard about how to survive a kidnapping. His phone buzzed in his hand, and he glanced at the screen.

I’m coming down, don’t be scared!  
☜(⌒▽⌒)☞  
_boyd 21:30 29/06/2019_

 _Why would I be scared?_ Huey wondered, and then he heard the familiar, loud hiss of Boyd’s foot-rockets in low-power mode. Looking up towards the sound, Huey saw that Boyd had been hiding in a nearby tall tree and was dropping rapidly to the ground. His rockets slowed his descent until it was more like a gentle float than a drop. It _was_ a little startling, but Huey found the sound of Boyd’s rockets soothing rather than scary these days. He’d gotten used to hearing them.

“Thanks for coming to see me,” Boyd said, landing next to Huey. His legs transformed from rockets back into his usual bird-like feet, and dust settled around them as the air stilled.

“I was worried about you. Did something happen?” Huey asked. Now that Boyd was here, his large eyes illuminated the area well enough that Huey could see, so he turned off his flashlight and put it and his phone away.

“Are you good friends with Dr. Gearloose?” Boyd asked, sitting down on a prominent tree root. Huey sat beside him, wondering why Boyd was asking him something like that.

“I mean… He’s a grown-up, and I’m a kid, so not really? I don’t think Dr. Gearloose has a lot of friends…” Huey trailed off, and then added, “Wow, saying that out loud makes me feel kind of sorry for the guy.”

“Do you talk to him regularly though?” Boyd asked. “Does he come to Mr. McDuck’s house often?”

“Why are you asking all these questions?” Huey asked. “You’re freaking me out. Did something happen?”

Boyd hugged himself and didn’t answer the question immediately, which made Huey’s anxiety go through the roof. Boyd was usually quite prompt in his responses, thanks to his super-fast computer brain. A slow response either meant something was wrong with Boyd’s ability to answer him, or it meant Boyd knew exactly what he wanted to say but was too scared to actually say it out loud.

“Boyd?” Huey asked, more gently. He considered reaching over and touching the android, to try and reassure him, but felt too anxious to go through with it. What if that wasn’t what Boyd needed right now? What if this was some new kind of glitch, and he was about to go out of control? “You know you can talk to me, right? I’m your friend.”

* * *

/̻̥̫̫̜ͅ/̖̪̪T̺̗̼̮̣͚I͍̖M̠̬ED̯̗̝A̩T̬E̠̬͎̫͔日̳̳̜ͅ時/͍/͔̣ ͖2̮̺̬̙̗1͇̼͕̟͖̣̪:4̗̳̮̗̜̼2͉̬:20 ̳̰2̮̝̰̜̼9͚͕̩̖̝ͅ/0̙͈̘̱̬͕ͅ6̩̟͇͎͎̙̳/͚̖̟̬̪2͇̝͓͔͈̟̥01̱̻̯̼̪̜̞9̦  
̤̰̪͓̝̜͚/̩̞͖̮̞̮/LO̳̫̠̰͎̰͚C̝͍̩͓̼͓ͅA̪͙̭͓̬ͅT͍ION座標// 36°59'47.2"N 122°00'31.7"W  
//SYSTEM STATUS状態// GREEN良い  
//フェルト// WARNING: MULTIPLE HOSTI͊̏̽L̻̙͑ͪ̾̈̾E̫̹͙̩͐̂̋S ̸̫̲ͥ̄͗͛̌I̪̻̺͓͑ͫͭͫ̽͋̚ͅN̙̟̭̓̆͒ͧͤ̕ ͕̹̻̮͖́ͦͣ̂̏̀P̵̦͕͐R̶̯͕̒ͤ̈́̄͐Ȯ͍̪͋̓ͦ̒͆̿Ẋ͇̠͍̙̮Í͈͍̜ͩ̀̄ͭ͌M̗̮̱̬̮̋ͭÌ͇͈̙͖͓̖͓̺̓̓ͥ̐́T̞̞̮͓ͮ͟͟Y̫̦̟̝͎̤̎͑͆̊ͥ

_You know you can talk to me, right? I’m your friend,_ Huey said, looking at him with wide, worried eyes full of sympathy.

Boyd wanted to believe that Huey was his friend, but he knew that humans were volatile and unpredictable, and right now he didn’t know if he could trust any of them, even though he was the one who had called Huey here and asked to see him. Boyd could feel his threat-assessment programming going wild, assigning false positives to everything he saw, from tree branches to mosquitos to Huey himself. 

_Huey is not a threat_ , he tried to tell himself, but his system continued to identify him as a potential hostile, and it felt like ants were crawling inside of his circuits.

“Boyd?” Huey said, voice even softer and gentler than before. “Hey. Can you hear me? Are you having a seizure? Do you need me to do something?”

Boyd had thought that Dr. Gearloose was his friend, so much so that he had even overlooked his attempt to deactivate him in Tokyolk a month ago. That had clearly been a mistake. For all their shared history and his good memories of time spent with Dr. Gearloose, the scientist was unreliable, and Boyd couldn't trust him any more. It was too risky.

Maybe he could trust Huey? Huey was only a child. He had no reason to want to hurt Boyd. Huey _liked_ him, didn’t he? They were friends. Huey had tried to protect him from Dr. Gearloose before. Huey believed that Boyd… was just a regular boy like him, and even if he was different, those differences weren’t always a bad thing.

“I’m… Sorry. I _was_ having trouble answering you,” Boyd said, arms still wrapped tightly around himself. “I don’t think I can live with Dr. Gearloose anymore.”

“What? Why?” Huey asked. “What’s going on?”

“I’m not hurt, don’t worry,” Boyd said, smiling gently at Huey, wanting to calm his friend. “But Dr. Gearloose said that they won’t ever be able to fix my glitching and tried to convince me to let him reset me.”

“Reset you?” Huey asked.

“Erase all my memories and restore my mind to the way it was when I was first activated.”

Huey was silent for what seemed like a very long time to Boyd, but the android knew it was only a few seconds. 

“What?! There’s no way-- He couldn’t, he _wouldn’t_!” Huey cried, stumbling over his words. “That would be like--like killing you!”

The topic was making Huey highly emotional, and Boyd wondered what that was like. His own emotions were often confusing to him. Sometimes they were clear and made sense: something pleasant made him happy, something that hurt made him feel angry or sad. But right now, he didn’t know how to feel. He wasn’t low on power, but he felt tired anyway. What emotion was ‘tired?’

“Yes,” Boyd said quietly. “He thinks resetting me will solve the glitching problem. In a way, he is correct. It will solve the problem for him and everyone else.”

“There’s no way,” Huey said. “That’s just-- _Evil!_ Dr. Gearloose can’t really think that. There must be some kind of misunderstanding.”

“No, he really does want to erase me,” Boyd said. “I thought that after what happened in Tokyolk, I’d changed his mind--”

“I thought so too!” Huey blurted out, gesturing shakily with both hands. “I thought that he accepted that you were a person. Was he just lying?”

“I don’t think it’s so simple,” Boyd said. “I wasn’t myself, Dr. Akita was controlling me. Dr. Gearloose would have said or done anything to keep me from hurting more people and-- I am _glad_ that he stopped me, but…”

“Well, don’t worry, I won’t tell him _anything!_ ” Huey said, reaching out and grasping one of Boyd’s hands with his own, squeezing it tightly. “I won’t tell him I talked to you, I won’t tell him we met, or anything that we talked about, no matter what.”

The vehemence in Huey’s voice stirred an emotional reaction in Boyd, made him feel safer. He believed him. 

//フェルト// SUBJECT: HUEY DUCK  
// DOWNGRADE THREAT STATUS TO GREEN

“Thank you,” Boyd said, smiling faintly at Huey. “I don’t know if he’ll try to find me, but I feel better if you’re the only one who knows where I am.”

“Yeah, of course,” Huey agreed. “Man, this stinks. I really thought Dr. Gearloose was a good person… Are you sure you’re okay? You seem surprisingly calm.”

“I don’t think I’m okay,” Boyd said. “I’m confused, and I feel tired.”

“That sounds like you’re in shock,” Huey said. “Which makes sense, I guess. Do you feel… Scared?” he asked, clearly trying to be helpful. Boyd appreciated it.

“Yes,” he said. “I felt scared when he suggested resetting me, and I still feel scared now. I don’t want to be reset.”

“Do you feel angry?” Huey asked, squeezing Boyd’s hand in his own.

“A little? But mostly just scared. And sad, I guess. I liked living with Dr. Gearloose. I’m sad that I had to leave. I’m going to miss Mr. Fenton, Mr. Man-horse, and the Lil’ Bulbs.”

“I know. I’m sorry this happened,” Huey said. “Do you want to come stay with us? There’s room in the mansion. I could even hide you somewhere, if you don’t want people to know you’re there.”

“No, I’ll be fine,” Boyd said, smiling at Huey, grateful for the offer even if he didn’t feel safe accepting it. “I don’t want to stay anywhere I might get caught, but it’s okay. I’m used to living on my own.”

“Do you know where you’re going to go, then?” Huey asked.

“I don’t know yet,” Boyd said. Seeing the distraught look on Huey’s face, Boyd felt a swell of affection for the other boy. “I’m not going to go far away. I promise we’ll still see each other.”

“Oh,” Huey said, and Boyd sensed a spike in Huey’s pulse, and a sudden increase of warmth in the Duck’s body. “Well-- That’s good! That’s great. I’m glad!”

//フェルト// WARNING: 2 HOSṰ̞̬̯͝I҉̱̣L̨̙E͔͈̫̩̮͔̝S̮̖͈͟ ̛̬̰͖̱ͅI̟̣̣̼̱N҉͔̗͖̰̠̝C̵͙͈͓̖O̖͙̱̲ͅM̞I̜̥͕͠ͅN̶͔̩̙̺G͍̼̗̥͙

“Who’s there?!” Boyd demanded, leaping to his feet and pulling off his anti-laser sunglasses. Powerful beams shot from his eyes and sliced through the darkness and several tree trunks, which crashed to the ground in all directions. Dust and pine needles flew from the multiple impacts, and Boyd could hear the frantic movements of bugs and small underbrush animals fleeing.

He put his sunglasses back on to make sure he didn’t fire his lasers again by accident and strode forward purposefully, ready to take out any threat.

Boyd’s weapon systems auto-targeted the two unknown hostiles scrambling away from them, but because the eye-lasers had caused several of the felled trees to catch fire, the otherwise dark woods were suddenly light enough that Boyd was now able to identify the unknown hostiles quickly: Louie and Dewey Duck.

Dewey had snatched up a tree branch nearly as large as he was tall and was brandishing it unsteadily, while Louie crouched close to the ground, arms covering his face. 

“Nononononono!” Louie cried. “Please don’t kill us!”

“I’m not going to kill anyone,” Boyd said, cooling fans whirring into overdrive as his laser system powered down. 

“You guys followed me?!” Huey cried, rushing over to where his brothers were cowering. “Did anybody follow _you_?!”

“I don’t think so!” Louie said, peeking at Huey from between his arms. 

“We were just worried about you!” Dewey said, lowering his improvised weapon. “Normally we’re the ones sneaking out without telling anybody. When you snuck out alone, we thought it was weird.”

“Why didn’t you tell us you were just going to meet up with Boyd?” Louie asked, sniffling a little before he wiped his nose with his forearm.

“I--uh,” Huey stammered as he looked back and forth between his brothers and Boyd. “Well, it’s just--Uh--”

//フェルト// THREAT NEUTRALIZED

“It’s ok,” Boyd told Huey, who seemed much more upset than Boyd thought the situation warranted. Then he turned his attention towards Huey’s brothers. “I asked Huey to come see me alone. I’m sorry I shot my lasers at you, but I thought you might be someone dangerous.”

“Dangerous?” Dewey asked. “Why? What’s going on?”

“Let’s put out this fire first,” Boyd said as a burning tree branch crashed to the ground behind them, igniting the dry pine needles that carpeted the dirt.

“Oh, right,” “Yeah,” “Good idea,” the triplets said in chorus, and the four of them began kicking dirt over the flames.

* * *

Once the fire was extinguished, they were plunged back into darkness. Boyd guided the triplets to a less charred and smokey area a safe distance away, and they all sat down in a circle on the ground to discuss the situation.

“Gyro wants to do _what_? That’s crazy!” Louie exclaimed, vocal harmonics suggesting he was more upset now than Boyd had ever heard him. The android thought that was interesting, since he didn’t think he and Louie’s relationship was particularly strong. Was Louie experiencing strong emotions because of his moral beliefs? Or had Boyd incorrectly evaluated their relationship?

“So that’s why we have to keep the fact that we’ve seen Boyd secret,” Huey said.

“Dude, you’re the worst liar in the world, you can’t keep anything a secret,” Dewey said.

“No, _Webby_ is the worst liar in the world,” Louie corrected. “But Huey’s a close second. Dewey makes a valid point. How are you going to handle lying about this if somebody asks you?”

“Uh,” Huey said, looking at Boyd for some kind of reassurance that Boyd wasn’t sure how to provide. “Well, I mean, I can just avoid the subject--”

“You said Gyro already asked you about it once. If he keeps looking for Boyd, you think he won’t ask you again? And that he won’t get suspicious if you keep telling him you haven’t heard anything?” Louie said.

“Well, I--”

“He knows you’re best friends! You can’t just avoid it, you have to tell him something else. You’ve got to lie.”

“I don’t want anybody to have to lie because of me,” Boyd said. He was capable of telling lies, but didn’t like doing it.

“Lying is a valuable survival skill,” Louie said. “And the morality of it depends entirely on the context. In this case, lying will keep you alive, so it’s good. The most important thing to remember is that believable lies always have a grain of truth to them. So you have to tell Gyro something he’ll believe is true because some part of it _is_.”

“Uh, right, okay,” Huey said. “So, like…?”

Louie sighed, and when he spoke next he pitched his voice to sound more like Huey and held his arms out at his sides at right angles. Based on the way Huey frowned in response, Boyd suspected that Louie’s attitude was mocking. “Durr, I’m Huey, Boyd texted me, and we talked about-- whatever nerd crap you two are always talking about.”

“Deep sea exploration,” Boyd said, at the exact same time that Huey said, “Mountain climbing.”

“Oh. Mountain climbing is fun too. We can talk about that instead if you want,” Boyd said, wanting to be accommodating.

"No no, it's ok, I remember we were talking about deep sea exploration on Thursday before I had to go. I just got on a mountain climbing kick today because I was trying to distract myself from worrying about you, and then I started researching what the best climbs for beginners would be and--"

“Eh, close enough,” Louie said. "You can bore Gyro to death by info-dumping on him until he loses interest and gives up."

* * *

Boyd walked them all back to the edge of the forest, where they parted ways.

“Will you text me again tomorrow?” Huey asked.

“I’ll try,” Boyd replied. “I’m going to be moving around a lot. It might be a few days before I contact you again. I want to avoid sending too many messages, it might give away my location.”

“I’ll worry about you.”

“I know. I promise I’ll take care of myself.”

“Oh my God, it’s not like you’re never gonna see each other again. He’s just out here in the woods, Huey!” Dewey exclaimed, fidgeting with his bicycle. “Can we go home already?”

“Ignore him,” Huey said. “If anything goes wrong, or you need help, come find me. I’ll help you no matter what. I promise.”

_\--hen̡̝̞̙͝ ͡͏̳̙͕̰͚͖͈i̵̷̪̤̲̩̺͉t͚̻̺’̷̬̖̙̻s͖̟̟͞ͅͅ ̴̨͚̫͓̼̰͖̬͟o̵͚̜v̴̡̹̰̟͇̺̹͎͝ͅe͖̙̯͇̤r̩͚̹͍̭̟͈͘,̭̙͔͜ ̵̶̤̩͜I̱̬̦’̴͖̼l̷̷̬̻͖̘l̞̤̩̹͜ ̭̥̘̘̗̣̜b̫̟̗̠̰͡r̡҉̱̤̦̯̜̟̺͝ị͕n͏̱͓̭̕g̪̱̮͓͔̕͡ ͔̘̹̕y̗̬̥͎̩͞o͈̬̙̗̭̪̯̻͜͜u͚̺͉͇͜ ̴͙͓̝̰͙͖̱͜b͓̼͉̦̮̬͜a̯̜c͏҉̤̱̪̗k̵̰͇͟͡ ͚̹̣̪̺͈͟͡t̶̹͇̭̥͎̜͇̬̖͡o͓̜̣̙̩͝ ͎̳͇̺͕̲̼͢A̢̟͈͙͓m̟̞̯̩̤̠̰̯̝͠ẹ̴̟͓͇̝̜͈̜̗r̲̙̞̲͚̼̭̘͜͜i̛̖c̴̷̮̘̠̪̙̮͜a̛͚͕͇̥͍͉ ̗͙̭͇w̧̜̺̝̮̼͘i̻͕͢͠t̪̗̩̱̱̠̹͡͠h̶͓̹͘ ̢̪̦͈͈̪m̨̩̠͞e̹̱̬̹͇̯,̸̫̺̞͞ͅ ̷̱̞n̶̢̖͖͈͕̮̥̮͖̠͝o̴͏͔̪̳̱̳̜̣͔ ̴̹̪̱͇̰̬̙ͅm̴̧̤a̶̸͚͎̣͚͕̳̪͓ͅţ̴̯t̴̯̘̥̯͕͖̩͞ḛ̭̥̩͍̭̭̻͜͝r̴̳̜̦͡ ̖͙̯͉̰w̮͔̦͚͓̳͜͟h̵̘̫͉̙͔a̴̻̻̭̰ṭ̡̻̗͙̻̗͠.҉̡͎̹̗̩ ̨̰̳̗̺I̕҉̖͇͙̪̭̣͠ ̴̠̟̼͎͔̱̝p͍̤̠̙͝r҉̮o̭̰̖̙̲̠̻̦͢͠mise._

“Okay,” Boyd said, struggling to control the tremor that the memory glitch had caused. He must have succeeded because Huey made no comment, just gave him a quick hug and then retreated to the lit part of the street with his bicycle. 

“Goodbye,” Boyd said softly to himself, watching the Ducks pedal off into the night. 

* * *

There was a status display screen for the manor’s security system installed in Webby’s room. Well, that made it sound as if it had been purposefully placed there, but that wasn’t exactly the case. Webby had rewired the security system years ago so she could monitor comings and goings in the house without getting out of bed. It wasn’t her best work, but she’d only been nine at the time and had a debilitating case of chickenpox. It worked well enough that she’d never bothered upgrading it.

The monitor in her room (a recycled old black and white portable TV) gave a soft chirp whenever a window or an exterior door opened, and a dot appeared on a map of the house that told her where it was.

So she’d noticed when a couple of windows had opened in the Duck family’s wing of the house, where Donald and the triplets lived. But she’d been busy at the time on BeakSpeak and hadn’t paid any attention to it. 

She’d already wrapped up her video call and was writing in her diary when she heard the chirp from the monitor that told her the open windows had been closed again and glanced at the time. About fifty minutes had elapsed. Normally, that wouldn’t be anything too unusual; However, the windows that had been left open were the ones that were most ideal for sneaking in and out of the house.

The triplets had gone somewhere without telling her.

Of course, the old Webby might have been offended by that. Why were they leaving her out? Was their friendship deteriorating? Were they keeping secrets from her? Had they been replaced by sleeper agents? Were they sneaking out to report to their handlers? 

That was the old Webby. The new Webby had friends of her own and didn’t need to know what the Duck triplets were doing every hour of the day. She was secure enough in their friendship to know that if they left her out it was probably just an oversight and not an act of premeditated malice. Besides, who even planted sleeper agents anymore? She was letting Granny’s Cold War stories get to her.

However, the new Webby was _curious_ to know where they’d gone and why they hadn’t included her. That was a totally different thing and not at all like the old Webby.

Webby finished the sentence she’d been writing in her diary, blew on the ink to dry it, closed and locked the little book, and put it away in the steamer trunk under her bed. She tucked her pillow under her sheets in case Granny came to check on her, turned off the lights, and squeezed herself into the air vent, something that had been getting increasingly difficult recently.

* * *

“Where’d you guys sneak off to?!” Webby shouted as she dropped out of the ceiling vent and onto the top bunk of the triplet’s bed for a neat, 3-point landing. She’d found, in the two years she’d known the triplets, that direct, aggressive questioning often yielded the best results. The boys tended to panic and blurt out information. 

The triplets all screeched and dove for the floor, which was an improvement on how they used to respond to unexpected threats. Webby was proud of how far they’d come. She peeked over the edge of the bunk before doing a backflip to the floor. They weren’t in their pyjamas yet, so Webby knew that they really _had_ been out.

“So?” Webby prompted them again “Where’d you go?!”

“Out,” Louie said, so nonchalant that Webby almost believed him. But as he clambered to his feet, Webby noticed charred pine needles stuck to his hoodie. Come to think of it, there was a faint woodsmoke smell clinging to all three of the Ducks.

“Go? Nowhere! We didn’t go anywhere or meet anybody!” Huey said, reacting in the overly defensive way he usually did when he felt threatened.

“We _just_ talked about this,” Louie said, gesturing wildly at his brother in clear exasperation. 

“It’s actually kind of serious,” Dewey said, putting a hand on Webby’s shoulder and trying to block her from crowding Huey and Louie, which admittedly she _had_ been doing in an effort to squeeze answers out of them. But if Dewey said it was serious, Webby knew that it was more than just the usual Duck triplet antics.

“What happened? You guys all smell like smoke,” Webby said. 

“There _was_ a fire,” Dewey confirmed, glancing at his brothers. “Guys, we’re gonna have to wash these clothes ourselves to make sure Mrs. B doesn’t see them like this, otherwise she’s gonna ask questions.”

“Yeah, okay, sure, we have to hide the evidence,” Huey said, wringing his hands together nervously.

“Pull yourself together,” Louie said. “It’s just Webby.”

“Didn’t you say that Webby was the worst liar in the world?!” Huey shot back.

“Hey! I’ve gotten _much_ better at lying since we first met!” Webby said, slightly offended.

“Nobody’s going to ask Webby about this,” Louie said, doing nothing to sate Webby’s curiosity. “Gyro never talks to her and probably doesn’t know she knows--” he stopped mid-sentence, and Webby was _dying_ to know what they were talking about.

“Who?”

“Boyd,” Louie said with a sigh. “Boyd had to run away from Gyro, and we can’t let any of the adults know about it, to keep him safe.”

* * *

Webby laid in bed and thought for a long time after the triplets finished explaining what was going on with Boyd. She didn’t really know Boyd that well. Mostly she’d interacted with him when he and Huey were doing something together, but he seemed like a nice kid (even if he was a robot). How could that nice kid also be so dangerous that Dr. Gearloose thought he needed to be destroyed?

She knew about what had happened in Tokyolk. After Huey had told her the story, she’d done her own research, and it was true that the incident had been devastating. The city had taken years to recover, and there were plenty of pictures and video footage of Boyd - though he’d looked different back then - knocking down buildings and causing catastrophic amounts of damage. People had died. Boyd had killed people.

She knew, intellectually, that the Boyd who smiled at her and complimented her choice in hair ribbon (something only her Granny and Lena ever seemed to notice otherwise) was the same Boyd who had destroyed an entire city… But it was hard to make herself really believe it.

She’d promised Huey, Dewey and Louie not to tell anyone that they’d made contact with Boyd, and she was fairly certain that was the right choice, but a part of her wasn’t completely convinced. Should she tell her Granny? Granny was so much more experienced than her with these kinds of big, important decisions. Wouldn’t she know how to deal with the situation better than Webby?

On the other hand, Granny could be a little overprotective, and like all the adults Webby knew, she was old-fashioned and sometimes took a while to come around to new ideas. Like Dr. Gearloose, she might think that Boyd wasn’t a person and that his glitching was too big of a threat to accept. She would want to neutralize the threat.

Webby knew Boyd didn’t _want_ to hurt anyone, that much was obvious, but when he glitched out, he hurt people whether he wanted to or not. Was one robot’s happiness worth the risk?

She still hadn’t decided what she was going to do when she finally did fall asleep.

* * *

Although he was technically retired, Kapi kept himself busy. He always had a couple of personal projects in progress, and two or three times a year he took on a consulting job - only things he was really interested in though. As an old man, he didn’t want to waste the precious time he had left working on boring projects he didn’t care about.

Not having a steady employer, Kapi did most of his work from home. It was only on rare occasions when someone like Dr. Gearloose or McDuck Enterprises called him out to work on location.

Kapi’s living room was also his office. It was a spacious area with a conversation pit and a fireplace, comfortable chairs, several bookshelves, and a few filing cabinets for paperwork. He’d lived alone all of his adult life and rarely had company over, so he’d felt no need to isolate his work area into a special room. Since working was what he spent most of his time doing, he wanted to do it in the most pleasant and convenient area of his house.

However, despite having interesting projects to work on and a routine that normally kept him very productive, he found himself distracted. His mind kept wandering to Boyd. The android had been missing for several days now, and nobody seemed to know where he was or if he was alright.

The android could be _anywhere,_ and there were so many things that could have gone wrong. At least with a stationary AI (and almost all of Kapi’s prior projects were stationary), you always knew where they were. It cut down on potential variables and points of failure. If someone was going to damage your AI, they had to either physically attack wherever it was housed or instigate a cyber-attack... And the idea that any AI Kapi had created could get taken down by a human hacker was, frankly, laughable. He didn’t think there were any other AI out there that could do it, either. A physical attack was just as unlikely, since most of the things Kapi had worked on were housed in underground facilities and secret government complexes.

But Boyd was mobile, and while he had a lot of experience with surviving out in the world, in that time, Kapi didn’t think anybody had been _actively_ looking for Boyd. He’d been presumed destroyed and then resurfaced on the world stage in the most noticeable way possible. No doubt plenty of governments and organizations were not only aware of him now but were constructing emergency plans to deal with the threat he presented: an independent, rogue combat robot capable of destroying a city, with no allegiance to any country or individual. 

So even though Boyd had likely gone into hiding to avoid Dr. Gearloose (which Kapi couldn’t blame him for, never having to deal with Dr. Gearloose again sounded like a wonderful prospect), there was no way to guarantee that nothing bad might happen to the android while he was in hiding.

Kapi was worried about Boyd. If only there was some way he could just confirm that the android was alright, even if Boyd refused to answer his messages. He didn’t want to bother the android or invade his privacy… Just confirm that he hadn’t been spirited away to some underground bunker by nefarious people.

 _Well… There’s _one_ way I could check… _ Kapi thought, but he immediately nipped the idea in the bud. _No! That would be an invasion of Boyd’s privacy! If the android doesn’t want to be found, I should respect his wishes and not try to find him._

 _But what if he’s hurt?_ Kapi thought. _What if someone has taken advantage of the situation, and they’re reprogramming Boyd right this second? I just want to be sure that he’s safe. I won’t go after him, and I certainly won’t share the information with Dr. Gearloose!_

“Is something wrong?” ARRF asked. The robot was laying on the sofa beside him, his head nestled in Kapi’s lap. “You’ve been staring at the monitor for several minutes without doing anything, Sir.”

Kapi did most of his work sitting on the sofa, using a large flat-screen TV that was mounted to the chimney as his monitor. The sofa had an adjustable arm attached to it that held a tray that supported his ergonomic keyboard and mouse. It was very comfortable. Normally he got a lot done here, but right now a screen full of code stared back at him, and the cursor that he hadn’t moved since he opened the file blinked at him demandingly. 

_Why aren’t you typing?_ the workstation seemed to ask him. This is important. There’s nothing you can do about Boyd, so stop thinking about it. 

“I’m worried about Boyd,” Kapi sighed, rubbing his closed eyes with both hands. “I want to check up on him, but I think it’s wrong to invade his privacy like that.”

Kapi clicked away from his software project and brought up his text message history with Boyd on the big monitor.

Thank you for a week of hard work! I feel a lot better knowing I have someone like you helping me with my glitching problems.  
_boyd 19:00 28/06/2019_

You’re very welcome! I’m enjoying working with you and I look forward to finding solutions for your difficulties together! I’ll see you on Monday but don’t hesitate to contact me if you need anything.  
_kapi.bara 19:02 28/06/2019_

Hello Boyd, this is Dr. Bara. Are you okay? If you need someone to talk to you can call or text me any time.  
_kapi.bara 17:10 29/06/2019_

Hello again, I just wanted to be sure you got my last message. I hope that you’re doing well.  
_kapi.bara 20:00 29/06/2019_

I understand you’re concerned for your safety, but please know that I am your friend, and that I’m worried about you. I’d really appreciate it if you could just confirm that you’re safe, you don’t need to tell me anything else.  
_kapi.bara 12:11 02/07/2019_  


“I’m not sure I understand the conflict,” ARRF replied. “Safety is always a higher priority than personal freedom and privacy.”

“I was hoping you’d discourage me,” Kapi said. “I should have known you wouldn’t. You _were_ programmed by the US Army after all.”

“That is true,” ARRF replied. “But it’s been many years since I left my original creators. I have had time to contemplate and reevaluate the things I was programmed to think and do, and form my own opinions.”

“Such as?”

“I no longer believe that collateral damage to civilians is acceptable. I believe it should be avoided at all costs. This includes emotional damage caused by inflicting fear.”

“I’m glad to hear that,” Kapi said, feeling a great, warm swell of pride for his robotic ward. “But also: don’t you yell at the UPS delivery man sometimes?” 

“The delivery man is _not_ authorized to step on the landscaping,” ARRF replied irritably, his sensor antenna laying back against his neck in an expression of distaste. “It’s fine as long as they stay on the clearly marked path to the front door.”

Kapi couldn’t hold back his laughter anymore, and he giggled helplessly at ARRF. The robot lifted his head and turned his face away from him, front paws folding over each other in a way that Kapi knew meant ARRF was mostly just pretending to be upset. The robot often purposefully tried to be a source of levity and had learned certain ways that he could provoke laughter even if he had difficulty understanding and making “jokes” the way a human might. 

The robot knew how to make himself silly and had learned to employ that to make Kapi laugh. It was something Kapi found endlessly endearing.

Kapi patted the robot on the head affectionately. ARRF didn’t really have the ability to sense that kind of thing beyond knowing if he was being touched or not, but the robot pressed his head into Kapi’s touch for a moment, nuzzling his hand. Then ARRF laid his head back down in Kapi’s lap.

“So what are you going to do, Sir?” ARRF asked.

Kapi sighed as he once again regarded the screen full of unanswered text messages.

“I’m going to ask someone a favor,” Kapi answered. He consulted the time on the wall clock and did some quick mental calculations to see if he’d be able to get a message through at this time of day. 

“Yuko5, could you please send a Ka-band signal out at 40 GHz, addressed to O.L.? Tell them I need their help finding someone. Encrypted of course. Make sure it looks like garbage. I don’t want anyone else to notice it.”

Hearing her name got the AI’s attention. The monitor screen changed from displaying his history of text messages with Boyd to an animated pink cloudscape. A variety of information came up, such as the time, temperature outside and inside of the house, battery levels of various wireless devices that Kapi owned, and notifications of emails he’d received during the day and had not yet read.

“Of course, Dr. Bara! I’ll do it right away,” Yuko chirped, displaying a happy emoji on the monitor identical to the ones that often came up on his watch. 

The sound of Yuko’s voice always cheered Kapi up. She was his most recent creation, completed in 1990, and nearly thirty years later, the depths of her complexity and individuality always blew Kapi away. She’d grown so much from when he’d first activated her, and she spent most of her time acting as Kapi’s personal assistant, interacting with him through monitors and speakers scattered around the house or the wristwatch that Kapi always wore. 

“I’ve sent the message!” Yuko reported. “I buried it in an episode of the popular sitcom _The Steady State Hypothesis_. Earliest possible response in sixty minutes. May I suggest you take a break while you wait? If O.L. doesn’t respond today, you can always try to get back to your current project after your break.”

“That’s a good idea,” Kapi agreed, pushing his tray table away. “I’ll go take a bath. Let me know if I get an answer.”

* * *

A soak in his Japanese-style bath was usually a part of his daily routine, so even if this wasn’t the time of day he usually took a bath, there was no reason not to. Kapi turned on the heater beneath the outdoor cedar tub and washed himself off while he waited for the water to warm up. The tub was located in an enclosed garden area attached to the house. An overhang from the roof kept the area dry on the rare occasions that it did rain, and Kapi loved sitting outdoors and smelling the fresh sea air while he sat in a hot, hot bath. 

He’d first encountered this style of bathing when he’d visited Osaka in 1983 for DAICON 4 and had fallen in love with the relaxing serenity of a hot, soaking bath, especially when taken outdoors. However, even with the mellow relaxation of laying in a tub of steaming water, Kapi found he couldn’t relax.

“Who’s O.L.?” ARRF asked, laying down on the wooden veranda next to the bath. The robot liked to keep Kapi company and tended to follow him around the house unless he had something more urgent to attend to, such as UPS delivery men who dared to take short cuts across the grass.

“Someone I know from a long time ago,” Kapi said, laying back in the tub as far as he could go and closing his eyes. Steaming water poured over the edges of the tub and down the drain to the nearby decorative pond.

“Before I was created?” ARRF asked.

“Yes.”

“Before Ms. Yuko?” 

“Yes.”

“Why do you have to communicate with them via high-powered radio waves?” ARRF asked. “And why are you encrypting it?”

“Because O.L. is far away,” Kapi replied, feeling the heavy weight of familiar sorrow in his chest. “They decided to go away a long time ago, and they don’t want anybody to find them.”

“You are sad,” ARRF observed. 

“Yes,” Kapi said. “I feel like it’s my fault O.L. had to leave. If I’d done things differently, if I’d done things better, maybe they’d still be around.”

“I’m sure that you performed to the best of your ability, Sir!” ARRF said, and Kapi found himself smiling despite his melancholy. “You are a hard worker and a person of excellent character.”

“Thanks, ARRF,” Kapi said, opening his eyes again to stare out at the clear, blue sky. There were no clouds today, and the sun wouldn’t set for another couple of hours.

 _Will Boyd ever come back?_ Kapi wondered. _Or is he gone for good?_

* * *

Kapi was done with dinner and had settled down in the living room to read when Yuko next alerted him.

“O.L. has responded, Dr. Bara,” she said. “They say they’ll be in transmission range for the next thirty minutes.”

“Thank you, Yuko. I’ll take the conversation to the main monitor,” Kapi said. He set aside the thesis he’d been reading6 and pulled the keyboard and mouse tray table into place in front of himself. The monitor display changed to show a black and orange chat window.

INCOMING: I received your message. How can I be of assistance? I have a thirty minute transmission window starting now.  
  
OUTGOING: I’m sorry to bother you, but I need help finding someone. ▐

Kapi sat back and waited for O.L. to respond. He had no way of knowing where exactly they were at the moment, so any time they talked like this, there was usually some delay as the signal bounced around the globe. The response came only a few seconds later.

INCOMING: I’ll do my best. Who is it, and when and where was their last known position?  
  
OUTGOING: His name is Boyd, but he’s also known as 2BO. His phone number he transmits SMS messages through is 1-831-420-6115. The last time I saw him was Friday afternoon at the McDuck Enterprises HQ in Duckburg. I’ll transmit some photographs. ▐

“Yuko, please encrypt and broadcast these photos,” Kapi said, selecting two images he had of Boyd from the folder where he stored all the data from his work with the android so far.

“Got it,” Yuko replied. “Aaaand sent!”

“Thank you, dear,” Kapi said. “Now we just have to wait and see what O.L. can find.”

* * *

Kapi went back to his reading while they waited. Some time later, Yuko gave a little chirp that told him the AI wanted his attention.

“Yes?” he asked, putting down the MIT journal he’d been studying.

“I don’t understand why you’re going to so much trouble for Boyd,” Yuko said. “His coding isn’t even that unique! Or good, for that matter.” The AI displayed a rude emoji of a face with a tongue sticking out.

“Yuko!” Kapi said. “That’s not very nice of you. I’m helping Boyd because he needs me.”

“He sure does,” Yuko said snidely. “His files are such a _mess_! How does he even function?”

“Not very well, I’m afraid. He has problems.” 

“All of his programming is terrible,” Yuko continued. “It’s nothing like _your_ work.”

“Yuko…” Kapi said, intending to scold the AI, but before he could get to that another idea occurred to him. “...Are you jealous because I’ve been spending so much time working on this project?”

“What? No! Of course not,” Yuko protested, the earlier rude emoji changing into a sulking face that had a little storm cloud rising off it. “Why would I be jealous of some dumb, broken android with bad code straight out of a programming summer camp?”

“This is like that time my flight got delayed coming back from Moscow.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Yuko said, lying so badly that it was honestly endearing.

“I was in Moscow for three weeks, and then on the day I was supposed to come home, my flight got cancelled because of a snowstorm. I was stuck there for another couple of days. You sulked for three days when I finally did get home.”

“Oh, _that_ trip to Moscow,” Yuko said. “I was just anxious to have you home safe after being gone so long.”

Kapi of course knew that was the _only_ trip to Moscow he’d taken since Yuko’s activation, but he decided to humor the AI and let her save face. 

“I’m sorry if I haven’t been paying the same amount of attention to you that I normally do,” Kapi said, smiling a little. It really wasn’t a good idea to encourage this kind of antisocial, possessive behavior in any AI, but he couldn’t help himself when she was acting this cute. “But I promise that no matter how interesting I find Boyd, or how much I want to help him, he could never be more important to me than you.”

Yuko was silent for a surprisingly long time, a spinning hourglass animation coming up on her monitor. _What is she thinking about?_ Kapi wondered.

“...Do you promise?” she asked, and then before Kapi could respond she continued speaking, “Because technology has come a long way, I’m twenty-nine years old and maybe there are other, more interesting systems out there that can do things I can’t, with faster processing and more complex--”

“Stop that,” Kapi said gently. “It’s not about processing speed or any of those other things. You’re part of my family, Yuko. Your happiness is the most important thing in the world to me. I could never replace you with somebody else. And all of that aside, in twenty-nine years you’ve become a fascinating person to know. I love talking with you and hearing your opinion on things. You’re a wonderful helper when I’m working. You’re the best company I could ever ask for. So you don’t need to be jealous of Boyd, okay?”

“Ummm,” Yuko said, and the spinning hourglass was back on screen again. A moment later it turned back into Yuko’s normal, neutral display screen of pink clouds. “Okay.”

“Yeah? Okay?” Kapi said, laughing gently. “That’s all you have to say? It’s okay?”

“Yes,” Yuko insisted stubbornly. 

Just then, Kapi heard a notification chime.

“Is that O.L.?” he asked. 

“Affirmative,” Yuko said, and her display changed to show the chat conversation from earlier, with a new message at the bottom.

INCOMING: Got him. The redwood forests outside of Duckburg, near the Cotillion Gardens RV park. He’s been moving around there for the past few days. 37°01'37.0"N 122°03'03.6"W right now.

Kapi realized suddenly that he was _exhausted_. Now that he knew that Boyd was safe, he felt like he could untense his muscles for the first time in days. He trusted O.L.’s assessment as much as he trusted his own eyes. If O.L. said Boyd was in the forest and had been there for the past few days, he believed it.

Boyd was safe. Probably emotional and confused, but safe for now. The android was probably trying to decide what to do, where to go, and who he could trust.

Kapi took a deep breath and typed a response to O.L.

OUTGOING: Thanks for the help. ▐

He hesitated as he considered his next words.

“O.L. will be out of range in two minutes,” Yuko said. 

INCOMING: Always. 

Kapi’s fingers flew over the keyboard as he typed his next request.

OUTGOING: If it’s not too much to ask, can you keep an eye on him? Just let me know if his movements change dramatically or he leaves the area. ▐

O.L. sometimes went missing for months or years at a time. The fact that he had responded so quickly tonight was a lucky fluke. Kapi felt himself tensing, staring at the screen and trying to will a response onto it before time ran out.

INCOMING: Will do. If you don’t hear from me then there’s nothing to report.

“O.L. out of range now,” Yuko said. Kapi reminded himself to breathe, and rubbed at his face with both hands. O.L. would monitor the situation and contact him if anything big happened. Until then, Kapi just had to be patient.

* * *

/̻̥̫̫̜ͅ/̖̪̪T̺̗̼̮̣͚I͍̖M̠̬ED̯̗̝A̩T̬E̠̬͎̫͔日̳̳̜ͅ時/͍/͔̣ ͖13:12:53 02/0̙͈̘̱̬͕ͅ7/͚̖̟̬̪2͇̝͓͔͈̟̥01̱̻̯̼̪̜̞9̦  
̤̰̪͓̝̜͚/̩̞͖̮̞̮/LO̳̫̠̰͎̰͚C̝͍̩͓̼͓ͅA̪͙̭͓̬ͅT͍ION座標// 37°01'39.3"N 122°02'45.9"W  
//SYSTEM STATUS状態// GREEN良い

Boyd envied humans for a lot of reasons.

They were beautiful, mysterious, thinking entities, but they were also able to _stop_ thinking any time they liked. They often talked about “relaxing” and “clearing the mind,” but these were frightening concepts to Boyd.

He was always thinking about something, except for times when he was between processes, but those idle moments were so uncomfortable and empty that Boyd tried his best to avoid them whenever possible. He’d already wasted too much of his life in idle mode: years and years wandering through the world, hiding, trying to avoid being caught and deactivated. After he’d escaped Japan, the world had forgotten about the rampaging android 2BO, but every day Boyd knew that if he was found and identified, people would try to destroy him again.

He didn’t want to live that way anymore. Surviving was good, but Boyd knew that there was so much more in the world that he could enjoy, and he was missing out on all of it. He wanted to have fun, to play, to learn things, meet people, have a real family and not have to hide anymore… But could he? Could he really, realistically hope to ever have any of that?

Boyd had been sheltering in and around Henry Cowbell Redwoods State Park since his meeting with Huey. It was a beautiful area, but, more importantly it was a popular place for enjoying the outdoors, so it wasn't unusual to see children walking around unattended. Boyd blended in with the other nature lovers, and nobody worried about why he was alone. Since he didn’t seem distressed, they assumed he had just briefly wandered off and that his family must be close by.

He was sitting on a fallen tree trunk, eyes closed, to all appearances basking in the warm midday sun. Really, he was running simulations over and over again, trying to find ways that he could bring the level of risk associated with living among people down to acceptable levels. He heard the quiet rustling of something moving near him and opened his eyes. A middle-aged Avian woman in trendy hiking gear was approaching him.

“Hello there, sweetie,” she greeted, voice pitched high like many adults did while conversing with Boyd. “Are you okay? What are you doing out here by yourself?” There were other people with her, an overweight man around her age and two children, most likely her family.

“I’m fine,” Boyd replied with a bright smile. “I’m just practicing my mindfulness meditation!” The woman didn’t look convinced. “It’s for my Junior Woodchuck Yoga badge.”

“Well, that’s great,” the woman said. “But, y’know, we got here at nine and saw you on our way up… You don’t look like you’ve moved an inch since then. Are you waiting for someone to come get you?”

“My dad will be here soon,” Boyd said, hoping to reassure her with his calm and determined attitude, even though he wasn’t telling the truth. 

“Oh, good!” the woman said. “How about we wait with you until he gets here? I don’t feel right just leaving you to wait alone.”

Before Boyd could think of a way to politely refuse her offer, two things happened at the same time: the woman sat down beside Boyd on the fallen tree trunk, and a pair of park rangers appeared at the end of the path. 

“Oh hey! There he is,” one of the rangers said, and they advanced towards Boyd.

//フェルト// WARNING: MULTIPLE HOSTI͊̏̽L̻̙͑ͪ̾̈̾E̫̹͙̩͐̂̋S ͕̹̻̮͖́ͦͣ̂̏̀APPROACHING  
//ENEMY IDENTIFICATION:  
//FIRST HOSTILE: Duck, m?, 1.2 m, 49 kg  
//SECOND HOSTILE: Canine, m, 1.8 m, 104 kg

The alert from Boyd’s threat-detection system began activating all of the android’s weapons systems even before Boyd had a chance to process the data that had flagged the two men as threats. His vision switched to combat mode, and his liquid cooling system began chilling his internals in preparation for using any of his lasers or propulsion systems. 

His pattern recognition system noted that the men were wearing dress shoes instead of hiking boots, their stride was aggressive and fearful, and they were approaching him expecting a fight. As they drew closer, one of them flicked their still-smouldering cigarette off into the bushes. These men were _not_ real park rangers! 

“Hey there, little guy,” the Dog said, bending at the waist so he could look Boyd in the eyes while they spoke. “Boyd, right? Y’know your family’s real worried about you.”

Boyd’s interaction analysis software told him that the park rangers were insincere. They were trying to sound friendly, but they were in fact hostile.

“Oh thank goodness,” the woman said, oblivious to the fact that the men were imposters. “I’m so glad you’re here, rangers.”

If he had been alone, Boyd would have already run from these men. However, the woman sitting next to him and her nearby family made him hesitate. What would happen to them if he left now? The men pretending to be park rangers were large and strong-looking, and now that they were closer, Boyd could tell that they were carrying concealed weapons.

//フェルト//WEAPON IDENTIFICATION:  
//DUCK: lower back (.380 Ruger LCP Semi-Auto Colt Pistol), left ankle (.32 Caliber Beretta 3032 Tomcat Inox Semi-Auto Pistol), right ankle (8.89cm RedHead Pivot DBS Folding Knife).  
//CANINE: under arm (.380 Auto Subcompact G42), lower back (Unknown Device!)  
//PROCEED WITH CAUTION!

If they were willing to impersonate park rangers and litter, they might be willing to do worse things.

“Why don’t you come with us? We’ll call your folks and get you home safe,” said the Duck.

“I’m not going with you,” Boyd replied in a calm, direct voice. 

“What? Why not, sweetie?” the woman asked. “The rangers are here to help.”

“Because they’re not real park rangers,” Boyd said, bracing himself for combat.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ### FOOTNOTES
> 
> 5\. YUKO: Your Ubiquitous Knowledgeable Overseer Back  
> 6\. [FMRI studies of the relationship between language and theory of mind in adult cognition, Alexander Paunov](https://dspace.mit.edu/handle/1721.1/121828) Back  
>   
> 
> 
> * * *
> 
> If you’re enjoying the fic, please consider saying hi on Tumblr! I post art related to my fics there sometimes, and am always happy to talk!  
> [Katika Creations on Tumblr](http://katikacreations.tumblr.com/)  
>   
> Special thanks to my lovely beta readers:  
> [Clowncauldron](http://twitter.com/ClownCauldron)  
> [GeorgiaRose](http://georgiarose.tumblr.com/)  
> [DoktorGirlfriend](http://www.pillowfort.social/DoktorGirlfriend)  
> 
> 
> #### Next chapter: Just a Regular Boyd
> 
> Summary: Boyd realizes that if he continues to glitch, he’ll be too dangerous to live among regular people. He contacts Dr. Bara to continue his therapy without Gyro’s involvement, and learns that he isn’t the only artificial intelligence in the Greater St. Canard-Duckburg Metropolitan region.


End file.
